Amazon Testing 'Kindle Unlimited' E-book Subscription Service
Amazon appears to be testing a new e-book and audiobook subscription service it's calling "Kindle Unlimited," which brings unlimited access to 600,000 e-books and thousands of audiobooks for a fee of $9.99 per month.
According to information discovered by users on the KBoards Kindle forum (via Gigaom) the Kindle Unlimited service will be available on all devices, including the iPhone and the iPad likely via Amazon's Kindle app. Amazon has pulled the pages that were found this morning, but information on the service can still be seen through Google Cache and a single test page.
The now defunct Kindle Unlimited section on Amazon.com lists several popular e-book titles, including Water for Elephants, Life of Pi and the entire series of Harry Potter and Hunger Games books. The titles appear to mirror many of those available through Amazon's existing Kindle Owners' Lending Library, a service that allows Kindle-owning Amazon Prime subscribers to rent free e-books.
There are several existing e-book subscription services like those from Oyster and Scribd, but Amazon has a larger catalog of books to offer, advertising more than 600,000 titles compared to Oyster's 500,000 and Scribd's 400,000, plus more than 7,000 audiobooks. Thus far, Kindle Unlimited appears to include books from publishers like Open Road Media, Workman, Algonquin, Bloomsbury, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
It is unknown when Amazon might officially launch its Kindle Unlimited subscription service and thus far, it has not made a statement regarding the test pages.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
Many public libraries have ebook libraries.
At our public library we offer free ebook rentals through Overdrive and other providers. The selection is quite good, latest releases are usually available.
In addition we provide a Books on Wheels program for elderly and handicapped.
In Houston the first 100% digital public library was recently opened, and I was told by a librarian that it's top notch in both available services and quality.
At some point in the future, Amazon sends me a note that my check out is about to expire and a few days later the ebook is no longer accessible through the Kindle app. If I haven't finished the book, I have to check it out again. Or, I can simply turn on Airport mode before I launch the Kindle app, and the book will stay there even after the expiration period.
I don't know how to get a book from my library with my pants off while laying in bed (theoretically). Could you explain how?