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Amazon brings Kindle Unlimited e-book subscriptions to the UK
Whether we like it or not, Amazon nearly always launches its new products and services in the US first. It happened with its Fire-branded tablets, set-top box and smartphone. The same can be said for its all-you-can-read e-book service, Kindle Unlimited, which after two months of availability stateside has today made its debut on the online retailer's UK store. For £7.99 a month, Amazon offers unlimited access to over 650,000 digital books (50,000 less than in the US) and thousands of audiobooks, which can be synced across e-readers, tablets and Amazon's numerous mobile apps. While you won't find books from many of the major publishing houses, Amazon does offer the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, as well as a vast number of Kindle originals. Good news for jetsetters, commuters and maybe also Kindle owners waiting for Kindle Unlimited to launch in other European countries, but some already believe Amazon's new service poses a very real threat to local libraries.
Feedback Loop: Yosemite beta, Kindle Unlimited and more!
Ready for a fresh edition of Feedback Loop? This week featured discussions about Apple's OS X Yosemite beta, Kindle Unlimited, Nokia's naming conventions, MMO mice and iWatch speculation. Head past the break to talk about all this and more with your fellow Engadget readers.
Barely Related: Marvel mixes it up, Comcast service facepalm
One great thing about live streams of The International and LCS championships – you can read awesome articles between the matches. Welcome to Barely Related, a conversational Friday column that presents the non-gaming news stories that we, the Joystiq staff, have been talking about over the past week. And no, we're not stopping our focus on industry and gaming news. Think of this as your casual weekly recap of interesting (and mostly geeky) news, presented just in time to fill your brain with things to discuss at all of those weekend shindigs. Grab a fresh drink, lean back in your armchair, and get ready to talk nerdy with us.
Pulling the trigger on Kindle Unlimited
After Kindle Unlimited launched today, we entered a lively debate in the TUAW backchannels about this new service. Nearly everyone agreed that Amazon had once again set a high bar for Apple to respond to, but not everyone was immediately ready to sign up for this monthly product that offers unlimited text and audio lending for US$10/month. For the parents among us, our initial reaction was "Whoa! Let us go forth and save money!" Kelly Hodgkins, mother of many, became one of the earliest TUAW adopters of the service. Mike Rose, whose daughter has already spent $170 of gift cards on Summer reading, could immediately see the appeal. Your $120 yearly membership (30 days free, cancel at any time) offers access to a library of 600,000+ titles, which sounds like a lot but may not include the books you specifically need to read. Of my children's Summer reading lists, not a single title was available through Unlimited. I went through our purchases for the last 60 days and could not find any item we had bought included in the Unlimited library. These included EL Doctorow's "Ragtime", Sonia Nazario's "Enrique's Journey", Kazuhiro Fujitaki's "The Manga Guide to Electricity", Charbonneau's "Graduation Day", Kiera Cass's "The One", Tom Doyle's "American Craftsman", Robert Galbraith's "The Silkworm", among others -- a mix of required reading and fun. After searching my recent transactions, it became clear to me how limited the library really is. I'm letting my credit card stay cool for now. And, of course, you don't get to "keep" any books you borrow -- even for DRM-values of "keep" in today's digital market. For those with flexible reading tastes, the Kindle library has a lot going for it. You don't have to wait for ebooks the way you do at your local library. You can borrow more than one title a month, unlike the standard Prime benefit. Kindle Unlimited includes unlimited audio from "thousands of audiobooks", which is a godsend for commuters. What do you think about Kindle Unlimited? Are you going to jump aboard? Or are you waiting for the library to expand to include more desirable reading material? Drop a comment and share. %Poll-88856%
Amazon unveils iOS-compatible Kindle Unlimited service; all the books you can read for $10/month
With subscription plans for music having taken hold in recent years, Amazon figured it might as well get in on the action and roll out a similar service for e-books. Earlier today, the online retailing giant announced Kindle Unlimited, a new service that lets users read anything and everything they want from Amazon's 600,000 strong e-book library for just $9.99 a month. In an effort to get as many users signed up as possible, the service will not be limited to Amazon devices. On the contrary, most anyone with a smartphone, tablet, or computer can sign up for the service via the free-to-download Kindle reading app. Indeed, supported smartphone devices include the iPhone, Android devices, Windows Phone, and even BlackBerry. Users who sign up for Kindle Unlimited also receive a free three-month membership to Audible, which is great because it allows users to seamlessly transition from reading an e-book to listening to the audio book of that same title from the precise place they left off. If you're at all curious about the service, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. As it stands now, the service is only available to U.S. consumers, though Amazon indicates that they'll be expanding into other countries soon. With music subscription plans all the rage now (all hail Spotify), it'll be interesting to see how the market reacts to a subscription service for e-books. Of course, the cynics among us might readily point out that you can just as easily get a free Kindle Unlimited subscription with something the old folks like to call a library card.
Amazon's Kindle Unlimited offers all-you-can-eat e-books for $10 a month
After teasing us with a possible launch, Amazon has confirmed Kindle Unlimited, its all-you-can-read e-book subscription service. For $9.99 per month, Kindle Unlimited offers 600,000 books and "thousands" of audiobooks across a range of devices. As expected, many of the major publishers aren't fully represented, but there are number of popular titles listed, including Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Hunger Games, as well as a whole catalog of Kindle exclusives. Like Prime, Amazon initially offers a free 30-day trial to draw you in, but it's also throwing in a three month subscription to Audible and access to 2,000 audiobooks via its Whispersync service (which lets you seamlessly switch between reading and listening whenever the mood takes you). For a service that bills itself as "unlimited," there's a few constraints on Amazon's Netflix-for-books service. In addition to the fact that it doesn't have the support from all of the major publishers, of course, there's also the small matter that it's only available in America. At least, for now.
