Amazon Rolls Out 'Netflix-for-Books' Style Service

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Do you read a lot of books? You might want to give Amazon's new service a try.

The largest U.S. e-commerce site said Friday that the Kindle Unlimited service will give users the ability to read as much as they want from more than 600,000 Kindle titles such as "The Hunger Games" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." They can also listen as much as they like to thousands of Audible audiobooks, including "Water for Elephants." The service will offer about 2,000 audiobooks from Audible with Whispersync for Voice, which lets users switch between reading and listening to books.
 
This seems like a great deal, but most people don't even have time to finish a book in a month.

And for the amount of money that eBooks make, why is there ZERO FUCKING EFFORT at making them presentable? You know how books can have beautiful illustrations and typography? Nobody gives a fuck about any of that in the eBook world. Their concept of a product is throwing text together and putting a crappy low-res image as the "cover."

What I mean is, why isn't there an actual eBook design platform? Everything is just a glorified PDF.
 
Having access to Audible is nice ... I love audiobooks since they let me do my reading (or listening in this case) while I am exercising, commuting, or on the go ... I don't know which audible books they are including, since 2000 is a small number of the total, but they do have some excellent ones on Audible
 
The selection is similar to that of Prime video and music. The most popular stuff isn't there.
 
Even so, some analysts are skeptical. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said that paying $9.99 a month for the service doesn't make sense for someone who reads roughly one book a month.

And Netflix doesn't make much sense if you only watch a couple of movies a month. Does this kind of stuff even need to be said? Really glad the "analysts" are here to tell us this stuff.

And really paperbacks are getting so expensive now, even if you only read a book a month it basically evens out.
 
The audiobook selection will make or break the value here, as audiobooks are not cheap! Audible is $14.95 a month (and you get ONE book...).

Otherwise, unless you are a voracious reader, you are probably better off buying ebooks on an individual basis.

Has anyone actually used the whispersync feature? (since I know that isn't new) I would be tempted by being able to listen to a book during my commute, but then be able to read it in the evening when I got home (or on a flight, etc.).
 
My wife can read 20 books in a month ... (I KNOW!) .. so this did initially sound amazing but she has essentially read what they have or has no desire to read like children's books. Not too sure who the target audience is here.
 
This seems like a great deal, but most people don't even have time to finish a book in a month.

And for the amount of money that eBooks make, why is there ZERO FUCKING EFFORT at making them presentable? You know how books can have beautiful illustrations and typography? Nobody gives a fuck about any of that in the eBook world. Their concept of a product is throwing text together and putting a crappy low-res image as the "cover."

What I mean is, why isn't there an actual eBook design platform? Everything is just a glorified PDF.

Of course there is no design platform, they can't even be bothered to proofread there damn things. On topic, if you read two books a month and have prime and a Kindle, you can borrow one book from the lending library and choose one book for free from Kindle First... Not sure how many Americans read more than two viola a month
 
Sorry two books a month. Not sure how many people read many violas, thanks auto correct and clumsy trap to fix.
 
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