Getting a subscription to Kindle Unlimited doesn’t mean you won’t need to buy any eBooks again. Yes, Kindle Unlimited sounds amazing: “Enjoy unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month.”
But it doesn’t mean you get access to even half of the Kindle eBooks library. Which parts of the library would you have unlimited access to with an active subscription?
Read the excerpt from the program terms carefully (emphasis added):
Kindle Unlimited Terms of Use
As a member of Kindle Unlimited, you may read Kindle books and listen to Audible audiobooks from a designated list of titles an unlimited number of times for so long as you are a member of the program. From time to time, we may add or remove titles from the program and we make no guarantee as to the availability of specific titles or the minimum number of titles available. The program is currently only available to United States customers. If your membership ends, you will no longer have access to the titles you selected from the program.
What’s that designated list of titles? Here’s the direct link to Browse Kindle Unlimited Books.
And, let’s do some math here. When you go to Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks, it gives you a current count of eBooks titles, both free and paid. At the time of this post, over 2.6 million. (cf. Quora – How many books are there on the Amazon Paid Kindle Store?)
What percent of 2,600,000 is 600,000? About 23%. Great deal for the voracious readers. Maybe not so good if you would like access to the other 77% most of the time.
All of the 600,000 Kindle Unlimited eBooks are not the cheap lowest priced ones, since there’s over a million of those. On the Buy a Kindle page, it says: “Over a million titles are priced at $4.99 or less. Over 1,700,000 titles are $9.99 or less.”
So what do you say? Deal or no deal?