Christine SlusserIn continuing its "let's give our customers all the things" ideology, Amazon has launched "Kindle Unlimited." (Via Getty Images, 2)
Amazon unveiled the service Wednesday in a promotional video.
"Introducing Kindle Unlimited, the freedom to explore over 600,000 titles and thousands of audio books in the palm of your hand."
The service will cost you $9.99 a month, and includes unlimited access to books and audio books galore. ... well, sort of.
Mashable points out the book giant said: "Subscription service members will, though, be limited to holding onto 10 digital books at a time."
So, you can read all you want, but you have to pace yourself to ten books at a time. We'd commend you if you could read that many at a time anyway.
Time was quick to point out there may be yet another legal pitfall for Amazon in all of this.
"The program may further complicated (sic) Amazon’s relationship with book publishers. Several of those publishers have been locked in a years-long tug-of-war with Amazon over the company’s pricing of e-books."
The story gets a little long-winded from here. Basically, when e-books first launched, they were sold just like traditional books. Online retailers bought them wholesale and then could determine their own price.
Several publishers thought Amazon was selling its e-books for too low a price. It goes without saying that "controversy" was probably great publicity for the book giant. I mean, the prices were too low? (Via Getty Images)
Apple convinced publishers to determine the final retail price. But Consumerist argues publishers got "greedy" and set e-book prices pretty high, noting some were even higher than a physical copy of the book.
Fast forward to today and settlement deals have been made and customers have been reimbursed. We will be interested to see if more legal issues arise over Amazon's new unlimited service.
But we can't say the service is unique. Amazon is joining others who have already hopped on the unlimited train like Oyster and Scribd. Amazon is offering more content, though. Oyster only provides around 500,000 titles, and Scribd sits at around 400,000.
Currently, Kindle Unlimited is only available in the United States.
