Monday, July 21, 2014

Amazon's New Kindle Unlimited Program

While I may have had a rant about cover letters scheduled for today, I decided to scrap that and talk about the new program from Amazon called Kindle Unlimited. You get to learn about this new program, and I get to spend more time crafting really good cover letters for my next career adventure, so everyone wins.

I received an email from Amazon on Friday introducing me to this new program. While on the surface it may look like just another way for Amazon to get your money, for the savvy reader it can be an affordable option to read like crazy without paying $25.99 for a new hardcover.

The program lets you pay a monthly fee of $9.99 to download and read an unlimited number of books onto your Kindle device. Amazon says that you have a choice from more than 600,00 titles. The Kindle Unlimited Page lists quite a few bestsellers and current popular titles, most of which are price between $8-$15. Not a bad deal, right?

Those who will see the best benefit from this program are the readers that are exclusively or almost exclusively using a reading device. It is also beneficial to readers who can devour at least 3-5 books a month. At just $9.99, the Kindle price of many popular titles will pay for themselves even if you just read a single book a month. However, if you are like me and don't necessarily want to be forced into reading a specific amount a month to justify the cost, you may want to skip this program for now.

The program is also great for Kindle authors. If an author chooses to enroll in KDP Select, their book is automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. The benefits for writers include being paid a royalty for the download, but the catch for this is unlike the royalty from the Amazon Prime Lending program, to get paid the Unlimited royalty the reader must read at least 10% of the title, otherwise the download does not constitute a payment.

Good news: my book is part of KDP Select, so you can take advantage of reading it if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited. But please, for every independent author's sake, read at least 10%. It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time and you may discover a great read. 

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