I have been a Kindle Unlimited subscriber since October 2014 and I often get asked if it’s worth it. I have been waiting to evaluate the service and as I reached the one year milestone of being a subscriber thought it would be a good time to reflect on my use of Kindle Unlimited. So today I dedicate my blog post to answering this question.
For those who don’t know, Amazon offers a book borrowing service, where you pay a monthly subscription of £7.99 and borrow up to ten books at a time for an unlimited period of time (provided you remain a monthly subscriber). Recently subscribers have been given access to a Your Kindle Unlimited page where you can see all the books you have borrowed under the subscription, which was a good springboard for my analysis.
From October 24th 2014 to October 24th 2015 I have borrowed a total of 66 books. The total cost of my subscription from this period is £7.99 x 12 months = £95.88. So it is costing me on average £1.47 per book to use this service.
If I was to purchase the 66 books I borrowed it would cost approximately £170. The majority of books I borrowed cost more than £1.47 to purchase.
Providing you read, return and borrow books regularly the subscription does work out more economical than buying the kindle books. However, in my situation, I find myself paying for books that I would have received from authors for free for review, but I am swayed by the convenience of having the books in the correct format to fit into my reading schedule and find myself content to pay for the service.
Another problem with Kindle Unlimited occurs if you are also a Prime customer and have access to the Kindle Owners Lending Library. Once you have borrowed ten titles on Kindle Unlimited, Amazon will not let you borrow from the Kindle Owners Lending Library if the book you wish to borrow is also part of Kindle Unlimited, which then leaves you with a severely limited choice of books that are only available on Prime exclusively (incidentally you are also not able to search just Prime titles and have to wade through lists of books looking for those with only Prime eligibility without Kindle Unlimited). I have complained about this to Amazon and am waiting to see how they resolve it.
In conclusion, if you are a reasonably fast reader with a good turnover of books, which include titles in the Kindle Unlimited scheme, you are likely to financially benefit from the Kindle Unlimited subscription, however it will cost you just under £100 a year if you subscribe monthly. Buying the books I borrowed would definitely cost me more than my Kindle Unlimited subscription.
Ajoobacats Blog 
An interesting analysis of the Kindle Unlimited program. I considered it for awhile, but then decided not to pay the subscription because I don’t read enough books on kindle – I usually read maybe one a month. It seems like a good investment for someone like yourself who does have a high turnover of kindle books.
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Definitely a service aimed at voracious readers but I think a lot of prolific readers were disappointed that the big titles and popular authors are not part of the scheme.
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That was another reason I shied away, quite a few of my go-to authors weren’t included!
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It’s an inexpensive way of finding new authors, but with the number of free books available on kindle you could do so without subscribing.
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That’s why I avoided it, most of my go to authors aren’t there.
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Mark Edwards and Denise Grover Swank are two authors on there I enjoy very much but I have discovered new authors.
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I don’t know if you are aware of it, but if you only ‘borrow’ a book, even though its costing you money, the author in question only receives $0.05 per page read. While that may sound ok, if you as a reader only read a handful of pages, the author makes far less than a standard royalty when the book is purchase. The only time the pay per page read scenario works for the author is when the book in question is a best seller…
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Very interesting Jack, I didn’t know that. It’s not the part Amazon tell readers about. I wonder who get most of the money? (Not really, it would have to be Amazon.)
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You’ve got it in one. Amazon treats every single one of its contributing authors as nothing more than cash cows to be exploited for the sake of profit.
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I am not surprised Jack, I don’t make money from this blog but was advised to use affiliate codes for my Amazon links and I have never been paid a penny, and this only entails a bit of cutting and pasting, if I’d poured my heart and soul into a piece of work I’d feel very demoralised to have it evaluated in this way. I keep the subscription up as I would in most cases have got the book as an ARC, but this way the author gets something monetary after my reading and reviewing it.
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Does the Kindle let you borrow books from your library? Lots of libraries have e-books you can borrow now, which is pretty cool!
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I have been meaning to look into borrowing ebooks from my local library for over a year now, I will definitely look into it this month.
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So, overall you recommend it for fast readers in spite of the drawbacks?
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Yes. I’ve voted for Kindle Unlimited by continuing to subscribe, but it’s because some of my go-to authors do have their book available on the scheme. I don’t think I’d continue if the psychological thriller books offered were sparse. I’d advise anyone to have a good browse, identify approx ten books they’d like to read before taking the plunge.
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Thank you for this post. I am currently doing a trial membership of the Kindle Unlimited service. What attracted me to it is the read and listen for free benefit. With quite a number of books you can also get the audible download in addition to the ebook which I really like. Admittedly, while there are a few thousand books to choose from, most of the ones I like (such as popular cozy mysteries) are not available. I probably won’t become a subscriber after the trial period is over because if I can’t get most of the books I really want to read it might not be worth it for me. I wonder if Amazin will make me give back the ten books I downloaded during the trial period? Thanks for sharing your experience with the service.
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I do keep finding more books I want to read on unlimited but it is no replacement for authors I love.
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Good analysis. I was thinking about getting this but thought about all the books I have pending and decided to wait.
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It helps to see if any books you want are included in the scheme, the first month is free.
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