Draft:Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited is a digital reading subscription service provided by Amazon that includes more than 4 million ebooks, thousands of audiobooks, and hundreds of magazines. Described as a “Netflix-style, all-you-can-read approach” upon its launch in 2014, Kindle Unlimited gives its subscribers unlimited access to the titles in the Kindle Unlimited catalog for a flat monthly rate.

The Kindle Unlimited eBooks catalog includes a selection of popular fiction and nonfiction, best sellers on Amazon, book series, comics and manga, and classics.

Titles in Kindle Unlimited can be downloaded and read via the free Kindle app available for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, or via the web. Customers can also download and read Kindle Unlimited content on Amazon devices like the Kindle e-reader and Fire tablet line of products.

Kindle Unlimited is available in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Brazil, Japan, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia. The cost of a monthly subscription in the US is $11.99 in the US and £9.49 in the UK.

A much smaller selection of the Kindle Unlimited catalog is available in Prime Reading. Prime Reading allows Prime members to read those titles at no additional cost beyond the cost of their Prime membership. A Prime membership is not required to join Kindle Unlimited.

Content
Kindle Unlimited gives its subscribers access to ebooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines. At 4 million titles, ebooks are the most significant portion of the Kindle Unlimited catalog. Many categories and genres are available to subscribers, including fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, romance, science fiction, fantasy, manga, comics, cookbooks, and poetry.

Titles by best-selling and notable authors such as Colleen Hoover, Rebecca Yarros, J. K. Rowling, Jacqueline Woodson, Dean Koontz, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Alice Hoffman, and Jeffery Deaver, as well as books by popular independent authors like Lucy Score, Freida McFadden, Catharina Maura, and H.D. Carlton, are available in Kindle Unlimited.

The ebooks available in Kindle Unlimited are drawn from three sources: traditional publishers, Amazon Publishing, and independent authors who distribute their titles through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

As of 2023, four of the five largest US publishers—often referred to as the Big Five —include their titles in Kindle Unlimited. US publishers Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Kensington, Chronicle, Sourcebooks, Disney, Scholastic, Open Road, and Norton have books in Kindle Unlimited’s catalog.

All titles published through Amazon Publishing are available in Kindle Unlimited. Best-selling authors with books published by Amazon Publishing include Colleen Hoover, Dean Koontz, Rebecca Yarros, Meghan Quinn, and Tess Gerritsen. Mindy Kaling has an imprint with Amazon Publishing called Mindy’s Book Studio, which features books hand-picked by Kaling, and all Mindy’s Book Studio books can be read in Kindle Unlimited. Amazon Original Stories are available to both Kindle Unlimited subscribers and to Amazon Prime members, and features short stories and essays by best-selling authors and celebrities, including Kevin Hart, Alice Hoffman, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Jacqueline Woodson, Margaret Atwood, Jessica Simpson, Jenny Lawson, and David Sedaris. Independent or self-published authors who distribute their books through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) can add their titles to the Kindle Unlimited catalog by enrolling in KDP Select. Books added to Kindle Unlimited via KDP Select generate royalties for their creators based on the number of pages read. Independent or self-published authors add the most content to the Kindle Unlimited catalog. Colleen Hoover’s Verity, The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas, and Hugh Howey’s Wool are among the most well-known independent titles that have been available in Kindle Unlimited and achieved best seller status.

Thousands of Kindle Unlimited ebooks are available in audiobook format as well for subscribers in the US, Australia, Germany, and the UK. Most of the audiobooks are created by Brilliance Publishing, which is an Amazon company. The audiobooks available in the catalog include the Whispersync for Voice feature, enabling users to switch between the digital book and the audiobook without losing their place.

In the US, UK, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy, Kindle Unlimited includes hundreds of digital magazines. The US features magazines such as People, Time, Real Simple, and Consumer Reports. When subscribers select a magazine, new issues are automatically sent to their library upon release. In March 2023, Amazon announced it was shutting down its print and digital Newsstand business, and select digital magazines and newspapers would be available only via Kindle Unlimited.

History and reception
Kindle Unlimited launched in the US on July 18, 2014, with over 600,000 eBooks and thousands of Audible audiobooks in its catalog. Among the titles available at launch were the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the Lord of the Rings saga by J. R. R. Tolkien, Kitchen Confidential, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Handmaid's Tale, and Life of Pi.

The press coverage of the launch included callouts about which publishers had books in the Kindle Unlimited catalog and the many publishers that did not. Inside Higher Ed noted that “Most of the books in Kindle Unlimited are self-published or published through Amazon’s imprints.” By 2020, four of the five major US publishers had books in the Kindle Unlimited catalog.

The response from self-published authors was also mixed. Several months after the program’s launch in the US, some self-published authors noted in a New York Times article that they were making far less money after they enrolled their books in Kindle Unlimited. Other authors found success. Wool author Hugh Howey noted in a 2016 interview, “I got a bigger audience and also more income than I did when I was with other outlets as well.” In its 2019 financial results, Amazon reported that self-published authors participating in Kindle Unlimited via KDP Select had earned more than $300 million in 2019 and earned a total of $1.1 billion since the launch of Kindle Unlimited.

Romance is one of the most popular categories of books in Kindle Unlimited, and TikTok and BookTok have become an influential platform through which subscribers find new romance reads. The hashtag #kindleunlimitedromance has 2.6 billion views on TikTok while #kindleunlimited has 3 billion views.

In September 2014, Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in the UK, followed by Germany in October 2014, Spain and Italy in November 2014, Brazil and France in December 2014, and Canada and Mexico in February 2015.

In February 2015, France’s minister of culture, Fleur Pellerin, announced that unlimited flat-rate subscriptions in which the price is not set by the publisher is illegal under the Lang law of 1981. Mediation began with Amazon, Izneo, YouScribe, and YouBoox to align their subscription services with the law. In December 2015, Amazon changed the name of the program in France to “Abonnement Kindle.” Amazon also announced that publishers established in France would set the price paid to them per page read, but that cost would be included in the Kindle Subscription program fee and would not be an additional cost.

Kindle Unlimited started in India in September 2015, China in February 2016, Japan in August 2016, and Australia in November 2016.

Amazon launched Prime Reading in 2016. The ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines in Prime Reading are a small subset of the Kindle Unlimited catalog. A benefit for Amazon Prime members, Prime Reading allows Prime members to try digital reading at no additional cost beyond their Prime membership.

Magazines were added to the Kindle Unlimited catalog in 2016.

By April 2016, Kindle Unlimited had over 1 million titles in its catalog. Its catalog reached 2 million by December 2021, 3 million by November 2022, and 4 million by June 2023.

Amazon announced on June 2, 2022, that it would shut its Kindle Store in China in June 2023, and as of April 1, 2023, new users could no longer join Kindle Unlimited in China.

In 2023, Kindle Unlimited announced its first subscription price increase in nine years, raising its monthly membership price in the UK, Germany, and the United States.

Subscription access
Titles in Kindle Unlimited can be downloaded and read via the free Kindle app available for iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, or via the web. Subscribers can also download and read on Amazon devices such as Fire tablets tablets and the Paperwhite, Oasis, and Scribe Kindle eReaders. An Amazon or Kindle device is not required to use Kindle Unlimited.

URL
Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited is a digital reading subscription service provided by Amazon that includes more than 4 million ebooks, thousands of audiobooks, and dozens of magazine subscriptions. For a monthly fee, members can read an unlimited number of titles from the Kindle Unlimited catalog. Kindle Unlimited is available through Amazon in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Brazil, Japan, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia.

The Kindle Unlimited catalog features digital books, digital audiobooks, digital comics and manga, and digital magazine and news subscriptions. Members may borrow up to 20 titles at a time.

History
Kindle Unlimited launched in the US on July 18, 2014, with over 600,000 eBooks and thousands of Audible audiobooks in its catalog. Among the titles available at launch were the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, Hugh Howey’s Silo series, the Lord of the Rings saga by J. R. R. Tolkien, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys, Kitchen Confidential, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Handmaid's Tale, and Life of Pi. The audiobooks available in the catalog included the Whispersync for Voice feature, enabling users to switch between the digital book and the audiobook without losing their place.

In September 2014, Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited in the UK,  followed by Germany in October 2014, Spain and Italy in November 2014, Brazil and France (where it is known as Abonnement Kindle) in December 2014, Canada and Mexico in February 2015, India in September 2015, China in February 2016, Japan in August 2016, and Australia in November 2016. Amazon announced on June 2, 2022, that it would shut its Kindle Store in China in June 2023, and as of April 1, 2023, new users could no longer join Kindle Unlimited in China.

Content
Kindle Unlimited includes a wide range of categories and genres, including fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, science fiction and fantasy, romance, manga, comics, cookbooks, and poetry.

Kindle Unlimited regularly updates its catalog. Popular authors such as Colleen Hoover, Alice Hoffman, Mindy Kaling, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay, and J. K. Rowling have works available in Kindle Unlimited in the US. US publishers such as Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Amazon Original Stories, Disney, Scholastic, Hachette, Kensington, Chronicle, Sourcebooks, Open Road, and Norton have books in Kindle Unlimited.

Authors who distribute their books through Kindle Direct Publishing can add their titles to the Kindle Unlimited catalog by enrolling their Kindle eBooks in KDP Select. To be eligible to enroll in KDP Select, authors must have exclusive rights to the primary content of the book, and the Kindle eBook must be exclusive to the Kindle Store during the KDP Select enrollment period, which is 90 days. Books added to Kindle Unlimited via KDP Select generate royalties for their creators based on the number of pages read and the size of the KDP Select Global Fund. The size of the KDP Select Global Fund is announced each month on the KDP Forum.

In certain countries, digital magazines are also included in the Kindle Unlimited subscription. In the US, Kindle Unlimited members can read digital magazines such as People, Time, Real Simple, and Consumer Reports . USA Today newspaper is also available in the US and UK.

Device access
Titles in Kindle Unlimited can be downloaded and read via Amazon-owned devices such as Fire tablets and Kindle Paperwhite, Oasis, and Scribe or via the free Kindle app available for iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and on the web.

Geographic availability
Readers can join Kindle Unlimited in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Brazil, Japan, India, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia.

Comparison to Prime Reading
A small selection of the titles in Kindle Unlimited can be borrowed via Prime Reading. Only Amazon Prime members have access to Prime Reading. A Kindle Unlimited membership does not require a Prime membership; nor do Prime members get access to the full Kindle Unlimited catalog.

URL
Kindle Unlimited