Amazon has announced that they are increasing the cost of their subscription system for audiobooks, ebooks and comics, Kindle Unlimited. The price is rising from $9.99 per month to $11.99 starting May 11th, 2023. If users are on a month-to-month renewal, the next time they are charged, it will be a new amount. This is the first time Amazon has changed the price of Kindle Unlimited since the program launched in 2014.
Until July 31, 2023, users can lock in the old $9.99 by purchasing a six-month or a 12-month subscription upfront. The cost to do it is $59.94 and $119.88. However, a way to pre-pay for cheaper is to buy a Kindle Unlimited Gift and gift it yourself. It comes to $57.55 for a six-month subscription or $96.40 for one year. The cost savings aren’t a whole lot, but they make a difference if on a tight budget.
When Kindle Unlimited first launched, the catalogue had 600,000 titles. Most independent authors opted into it when submitting their ebooks to Kindle Direct Publishing or Amazon’s imprints. Major publishers were wary of an unlimited program, as they thought it would devalue their books at the time. Amazon signed several bestselling titles to encourage people to pay the monthly fee; this included the entire Harry Potter saga and the Hunger Games.
In 2023 Amazon will have over four million audiobooks, comics, ebooks and magazines in Kindle Unlimited. Major publishers still have not committed to the program, but do have a number of backlist titles available. Many of the books on Kindle Unlimited are exclusive to Kindle Unlimited. One of the significant advantages of the platform is magazines. Amazon shuttered their newsstand a couple of months ago and is no longer directly selling magazine subscriptions, they moved everything to Kindle Unlimited, so there is a ton of value here if you want to read magazines in a Kindle-friendly format.
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.