Amazon made international headlines when it unveiled its Netflix for eBooks concept entitled Kindle Unlimited. This program allows users to pay a low monthly fee and read as many titles as they want per month, from a pool of 650,000 digital books. All of the major publishers have so far refused to contribute their titles, so the lack of bestsellers is not very appealing. At any rate, Amazon has announced today that Unlimited is now available in the UK.
Amazon.co.uk today introduced Kindle Unlimited—a new subscription service which allows customers to freely read as much as they want from over 650,000 Kindle books and listen as much as they want to thousands of Audible audiobooks, all for only £7.99 a month. Finding a great book is easy—just look for the Kindle Unlimited logo on eligible titles and click “Read for £0.00.” Customers can choose from best sellers like the Harry Potter series, The White Tiger, Hunger Games and with thousands of professionally narrated audiobooks from Audible, like Life of Pi, A Day at the Office and classics like Great Expectations, the story can continue in the car or on the go. Kindle Unlimited is available starting today and is accessible from Kindle devices or with Amazon’s free Kindle reading apps.
“With Kindle Unlimited, you never have to think twice about what book you want to read or listen to,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President, Kindle EU. “With unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of titles, Kindle Unlimited offers by far the simplest and most cost-effective way to explore and discover eBooks and audiobooks together, and you can even switch from reading to listening without losing your place. Our US customers have shown us how much they love the opportunity to discover new authors and genres, and now we’re delighted to offer the same freedom to our customers in the UK.”
In addition to over 650,000 titles, Kindle Unlimited includes thousands of Whispersync for Voice enabled titles so customers can switch easily between reading and listening, allowing the story to continue even when their eyes are busy—all for just £7.99 a month.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.