Lake Atitlan, Panajachel, Guatemala

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Kindle Unlimited: Made for Book Lovers

When I first heard about Amazon's new "Netflix for books" program, Kindle Unlimited, I thought it sounded crazy. Who would pay nearly $10 a month, every month, for all the Kindle books you can read? I read through a few of the lists Amazon was using to promote their new feature and didn't see any of interest to me.

Then I looked again and thought, Well, maybe that one...And there's Life of Pi, I never did read it...And I love The Hobbit, I could read it again...and so forth until I clicked on the free trial. One month free to try it out. You can download any books regardless of price as long as they're listed on Kindle Unlimited. You keep up to 10 at a time, so if I have 10 and want another, a pop up shows your list and asks if you'd like to return one.

Amazon says 600,000 books are available on Kindle Unlimited right now. Not very many when you figure there's 2 million Kindle books. However, I'm looking for quality, and so far I've been able to find some pretty amazing books.

If I lived in the States, I'm not sure I'd go for it with the availability of libraries. But where I am, I can't run to the library and check out a stack of books-- in English. So when my free trial ends, I'll keep paying $10 a month for Kindle Unlimited. We pay $9 a month for Netflix and I don't watch as many movies as I read books. As long as they have good titles I want to read, it makes sense to me.

Have any of you tried Kindle Unlimited yet? Do you plan to?