
Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited - ecrotty
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3A6jL66Zad7zIJ%3Awww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fkindle%2Fku%2Fsign-up%2Fui%2Frw%2Fabout+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
======
JunkDNA
Lots of people in this thread are talking about this being scary for authors.
When I was a kid, I got to read a ton of books any time I wanted. I got them
at this place called a "library" where they let people come in and take books
home with them to read for _free_.

People have always had the option to read books without buying them. In those
days, going to the library was effectively the same effort as going to a book
store. In fact, it was more convenient for my family. We happened to live a
few blocks from the library and didn't need to drive across town to the mall
to get books in dingy little B. Dalton bookstore.

I will grant that the economics in the eBook situation are dramatically
different than with physical books, but I really wonder how different they
really are. Local libraries already lend ebooks as well. I'm not sure why more
people don't take advantage of that.

~~~
chubot
I'm a regular user of the local library, but I notice that most people in my
"class" (i.e. tech people earning a lot) don't go there. It's easier to buy it
on your Kindle for $10-$15 than to make a trip to the library. I'm gonna be a
jerk and say that most people also like to hang out in expensive coffee shops
with other members of their class, and not in the library where there are lots
of poor people.

It's a little bit like grocery stores... you can often get a better deal if
you go to another neighborhood. But most people want to hang out with their
peers in the nice grocery store. The savings isn't worth the trip either.

~~~
bitJericho
Wow... I don't know what libraries you go to but libraries are generally not
full of poor people...

~~~
MadManE
As much as we would like it to not be true, in the real world free services
attract the lowest financial class of people. Libraries are awesome, and I
spent a significant portion of my life in them, but as soon as I could afford
to not use them, I quit going to them.

~~~
59nadir
Depends if the "real world" is the US, Sweden or, for example, Bulgaria.

In the US, this might be the case. In Sweden, mostly you'll find kids, moms
and people studying (depending on the city, if it has a university or not). A
very small subset is there for computer access, but it's certainly not a
majority.

In Bulgaria, no one seems to go to the library. They check your ID when you go
in and it's not really a place to hang out.

Libraries aren't the same everywhere.

------
cliveowen
A few weeks ago Jon Evans of TechCrunch said this:

"Despite my techie contempt for their business practices, I really do want
traditional publishers to survive, because their employees — unlike, I
suspect, Amazon’s — tend to genuinely love books in the same way that I do,
and because good editors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s hard to see
how they can thrive fighting like this. In the long run their only real hope
is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats
for books,” if you will.

 _I’m not sure how successful that will be. Books are not like songs. But it’s
hard to see where else their future lies._ Never mind the current Amazon vs.
Hachette skirmish; that’s just a sideshow. Book publishers essentially
conceded their long war with Amazon before it ever began, without even knowing
what they were doing." [1]

Looks like he was spot on, and it looks like Amazon won the whole war.

EDIT: It looks like he predicted this almost a year ago in another article:

"With luck we’re entering a world in which readers have access to any and
every book for a flat fee; authors get paid depending on how much they’re
actually read; publishers remain a vital but decreasingly visible part of the
process; physical books are still available via online print-on-demand and
niche physical stores; and zillions of CC-licensed books are freely available
to readers in the poor world who can’t yet afford books or subscription
services. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems to me that that’s a win for
absolutely everyone." [2]

And I have to agree, this looks like a big win for everyone.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-
wa...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-war-is-that-
one-day-it-will-end/)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-
ou...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-out-your-
books/)

~~~
jobu
That's a great quote from Jon Evans, and it fits well with Steve Yegge's
perspective on Jeff Bezos:

 _" I mean, imagine what it would be like to start off as an incredibly smart
person, arguably a first-class genius, and then somehow wind up in a situation
where you have a general’s view of the industry battlefield for ten years. Not
only do you have more time than anyone else, and access to more information
than anyone else, you also have this long-term eagle-eye perspective that only
a handful of people in the world enjoy."_

Jeff Bezos is playing chess simultaneously with a number of industries and so
far he seems to be winning.

~~~
snowwrestler
He's not winning across the board; Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted
the tablet market (I think it has actually lost share recently), and no one
expects their phone to do so either.

And while Amazon has a good digital media business, it would be a stretch to
say that they are beating Google or Apple in that space. Only in books does
Amazon have a strong digital media share.

~~~
toyg
_> Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted the tablet market_

I don't think that's the point of it. Tablets and phones are _insurance
policies_ for Amazon; so that they can have some minimal leverage with Apple
and Google going into any negotiating table. I don't think it's a coincidence
that they started working on them when Apple started messing with the Kindle
app.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Most people don't spend $9.99 on books every month on average. If Amazon
encourages people who are infrequent readers to devote more of their
time/entertainment-dollars on reading, then this service will be a win-win for
Amazon and authors.

Also, if my service is all-you-can-eat, I'm definitely going to take more
risks with authors I haven't heard about. That is a definite win for unknown
and unpromoted authors.

Some of the blockbuster authors may suffer lower revenues ... but fuck them.
I'm less worried about JK Rowling who makes a billion dollars on each book,
and already has plenty of incentive to write. I'm more worried about Professor
Joe Schmoe, a Com. Sci. academic who has this really great AI story inside
him, that needs just a little monetary incentive to come out.

~~~
nlh
> _Most people don 't spend $9.99 on books every month on average. If Amazon
> encourages people who are infrequent readers to devote more of their
> time/entertainment-dollars on reading, then this service will be a win-win
> for Amazon and authors._

Totally. I'm one of those people and right smack in the middle of the
crosshairs for this. I'm the kind of person that is always willing to overpay
in order to have "unlimited" anything, even if it doesn't make direct
financial sense. I'm not sure why, but I guess it's because I don't like
having limits or having or budget, etc. Part of the reason I happily pay
$9.99/month for Spotify when, if I really think about it, I wouldn't really
buy 7-9 new songs a month every month on iTunes. But I don't care -- I'd still
rather know I could stream 20 entire albums if I want for that same $9.99.

And same goes with Kindle -- I probably (actually, certainly) don't buy a book
a month, but knowing I have a catalog of 600k titles at my disposal for $10
will be a no-brainer.

/psyched

~~~
TheMagicHorsey
Imagine if we could get access to the O'Reilly library of technical books,
that would be extremely valuable.

~~~
walterbell
What's the advantage of accessing O'Reilly's library of technical books via an
Amazon app vs. an O'Reilly app, other than O'Reilly losing money that would
otherwise go to improving their technical books?

------
oneeyedpigeon
It'll be fascinating to see how our relationship with books plays out over the
next 10-20 years. On one hand, unlike music, books are very physical objects,
their content very much associated with their form, used by many as decoration
within their home. On the other hand, most of us only read most of our books
once. I suspect that many, like me, then hang onto those books primarily for
sentimental reasons (along with the slim chance that someone else might want
to borrow them, future children might want to read them, we might re-read them
one day, but probably never will), but that feels very much like a cultural
fad, albeit quite a long-lived one!

~~~
oh_sigh
Music used to be home decoration too. Walls filled with vinyl, CD and tape
racks prominently displayed.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I'm aware of that (my father had quite an extensive 'wall' of vinyl, and I've
had bookshelves of CDs in the past, too) but I don't think music-as-display-
item was _quite_ in the same league. It was more for real enthusiasts whereas
pretty much _everyone_ displayed books, and for a much longer period of
history.

~~~
dfxm12
Well, printed books have been around a lot longer than "printed" music, so of
course, there was a time when people (who were lucky/rich enough to own books)
displayed books because they had nothing else to display. That's not really a
fair comparison, nor one that makes sense in this context.

I also think you're really underplaying how people enjoy their music
collections. I hold on to records for the same reasons you hold on to books.

The next few decades will be interesting. Just like how vinyl has received an
increase in popularity for many reasons, if this Kindle Unlimited type of
distribution for the written word takes off like digital distribution did for
music, you should fully expect hip young people in 2044 to start buying books
again.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
No, I totally understand about music collections. I still buy new albums on
CD, despite the fact that I mainly take advantage of Amazon's instant MP3
delivery (autorip?) [1] which means the original CDs might even never get
played. I simply cannot shake that sentimental need to own/collect an object
that I can associate with that album. I truly think this is unhealthy
behaviour, though, one which the human race will overcome, but that I
personally probably will not.

I'm guessing [2] you hold onto records not _just_ because of your attachment
to the physical object, but also because you get them out and play them from
time-to-time. I hold onto countless books that I will almost certainly never
read again.

[1] Yes, I'm aware that, in some people's eyes, this makes me the worst kind
of philistine, but I'm a music fan, not an audiophile.

[2] With apologies if that's not the real reason you hold onto records :)

------
cypherpnks
Amazon is the new socialism. There are basic services which the government
ought to provide -- access to unlimited books, movies, music, software, and
similar. It's dramatically more economically efficient that way. The
governments won't, for a whole range of reasons. Amazon seems to be stepping
up. You pay a private tax, and you join a private government.

~~~
NegativeK
Um.

Libraries.

------
Jemaclus
Awesome. This is a nail in the coffin for Oyster or whatever that other app
was. You can't beat Amazon's selection or prices, and this just makes the
Netflix comparison even better. Oof. Sucks for competition, good for my Kindle
and my wallet.

~~~
walterbell
Unclear what subset of all Kindle books would be included.

[http://gigaom.com/2014/07/16/amazon-is-testing-kindle-
unlimi...](http://gigaom.com/2014/07/16/amazon-is-testing-kindle-unlimited-an-
ebook-subscription-service-for-9-99month/)

\---

No big-5 publisher appears to be participating yet, based on my preliminary
glance through the test pages. Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have both
made their ebooks available to Scribd and Oyster, but I haven’t yet seen books
from those publishers on the Kindle Unlimited page, though I’m not done poking
through all 600,000+ titles yet.

\---

~~~
dublinben
The publishers are really in the position to kill this. They obviously don't
want to support an Amazon-based unlimited book rental service, and no users
will join it if they can't read the books they want to.

~~~
cstross
It really depends ...

How much do people read? Nobody's too sure, but it looks like an extremely
long tail distribution -- not just a matter of 80% of the books being read by
20% of the readers, but of 80% being read by maybe 5-10% of the readers.

The $9.99/mo price point will work fine for the major publishers if the
readers end up _on average_ reading $9.99 of retail-value ebooks per month,
but not too much more, and if AMZN's accounting back-end pays them pro-rata
for loans. It's like an all-you-can-eat restaurant buffet; some people will
pig out, but most people don't fill themselves to the point of nausea, and it
all averages out in the end.

However, I suspect it's no coincidence that this is surfacing at the same time
that AMZN are renegotiating their ebook pricing contracts with the big five
(starting with the current dust-up with Hachette). It's another form of
leverage: Amazon can offer it as a tasty extra -- in effect, a commercial
library access channel -- for compliant publishers, but can also threaten to
withhold access to the new channel if they won't play ball over discount
structures.

~~~
dublinben
>How much do people read? Nobody's too sure

We actually have a pretty good idea. According to Gallup/Pew research[0], the
median American reads 8 books a year. Slightly less than a third read more
than one book a month. I doubt any customer who reads less than one ebook (let
alone a physical book) per month would find it worth signing up for this
service. That leaves the service with mostly heavy consumers of books, which
is going to really stretch that $10/mo price point. Since the major publishers
already think that _a single_ ebook is worth at least that, I can't see them
joining a program that will almost certainly deliver less revenue.

[0][http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-
re...](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/)

~~~
cstross
The problem is, those figures aren't granular enough to use for marketing
purposes. For example, it's known that about 50% of genre SF/F book sales go
to about 20% of customers -- and about 45% go to less than 10% of customers!
Some folks are reading over 100 books/year. (I know plenty of them.) We know
there's a curve; we just don't really know it's shape in enough detail to
predict how an all-you-can-eat book buffet will pay for itself.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _We know there 's a curve; we just don't really know it's shape in enough
> detail to predict how an all-you-can-eat book buffet will pay for itself._

The thing is, _Amazon_ might. They can read the distribution of books bought
per unique user annually straight out their database, and them being the size
they are, that seems like quite a good proxy for how many books are read per
year by people.

------
will_work4tears
I wonder about the average use specifics for kindle users. Obviously Amazon
has insight into this and would set their pricing appropriately.

Assuming the kind of books listed here are the kind on the daily deal (1.99):
The average user would have to read only 4-5 books a month to break even (say
9 books every two months counting taxes).

I doubt most users would read that consistently. Maybe the first month, but
usage would likely drop, and the deal works out better in Amazon's favor until
they quit. Which for many users could be until their credit card expires.

I probably only read 6 books a month at the most these days, and some months I
probably drop down as low as 1 book every month several times a year. I'd
probably enroll in this service so even if they have 9.99 normal cost ebooks,
I think overall it'd work so Amazon doesn't lose much more than they would
with their current structure.

~~~
mavrc
Things look a lot rosier for audiobook listeners, though, because audiobooks
are significantly more expensive than textbooks. Even the cheapest Audible
subscription is $15. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they mean by
"thousands of audiobooks;" if they're incorporating the Audible library, then
this is an easy decision.

~~~
ericdykstra
I'm an Audible subscriber (all of my book-reading comes via audiobook), and I
would obviously jump over immediately if the entire library was available.
Audible has many more than "thousands" of books, though, so I think it will be
a gradual process.

~~~
Splendor
I'm very confused by all of this since Amazon owns Audible.

------
frio
Interesting. I wonder what this implies for authors. Amazon might take a cut
currently, but the lion's share ends up with the author -- a royalty based
scheme significantly changes the playing field, and I worry that it could be
for the worse ([http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-
arts-25217353](http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353)).

EDIT -- and what it implies for publishers.

~~~
jonnathanson
It'll definitely be interesting to watch. The article you linked talks about
the effects of Spotify on making a living as a musician. Spotify economics
are, as you've pointed out, _much_ tougher for authors than for songwriters.
Books take a lot longer to create than songs. Also, people listen to the same
songs hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of times before getting sick of
them. People generally read books once. Maybe a few times, over the course of
their entire lives, if they really love the book. You don't get the frequency
effect that you do with music consumption. So a fractional royalty, multiplied
by a lot of individual readers, each of whom reads the book once, is probably
the best outcome for any given book in this case.

If this model takes hold, the thing that may need to change is the book
itself. The economics of subscription suggest a shift in incentives away from
the years-long creation of 300+ page tomes, and toward serialization or
shorter forms. It behooves me, as an author, to have 10 or 20 "books" (or
serialized installments) floating around the system each year, casting a wider
net, than to bet the farm on one book a year.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>The economics of subscription suggest a shift in incentives away from the
years-long creation of 300+ page tomes, and toward serialization or shorter
forms.

This has already happened. For smarter writers, Amazon's distribution model
killed the Big Novel model and pushed them to a cheap installment-of-the-month
model.

Dickens used to publish like this (not through Amazon, obviously) so it's not
necessarily a bad model.

But writers are notoriously bad at business, which is why mainstream
publishing contracts have gotten away with being so larcenous and exploitative
for so long, and why it's been so hard to make a living out of fiction unless
you top the best-seller lists.

Amazon changed that. A lot of authors were finding they could support
themselves from self-published fiction, full-time - which was never possible
with trad-pub contracts, because they give mid-list and lower writers a tiny
advance, insultingly small royalties, _and_ take up to two years to get a book
into the stores after the writing is done.

Those self-pub writers are going to be looking at this nervously to see how it
changes the economics again.

Not that they should be surprised. A lot of people predicted this.

~~~
jonnathanson
Absolutely. Although I'm maybe more optimistic on this point:

 _" Those self-pub writers are going to be looking at this nervously to see
how it changes the economics again."_

I dunno. For the time being, many of them will need to think carefully about
how this shift changes things. But they're the ones who stand the benefit the
most here. Self-pubbers who have been playing a volume and catalog game -- as
the more successful ones have for years now -- are going to understand how to
play this new game. Traditional authors, who've never been much for business
or self-promotion as a group, are going to freak out. People with large
catalogs are going to win. People with one or two Big Novels are going to lose
(unless those Big Novels happen to be bestsellers already). People who can
produce reams and reams of new material every year, nurturing mailing lists
and activating fan bases, are going to keep doing that, and it will keep
serving them well.

------
jareds
I hope this works on the iPhone although since the Kindle lending library does
not I would not be surprised if it doesn't. Since I'm blind a $69 Kindle
obviously won't work and I can't justify $200 for a Kindle Fire that I would
use just to read books. I did the math and it would take me several years to
make buying a Kindle Fire worth while verses just buying the books through
Kindle.

~~~
dignati
The Kindle has a T2T engine which makes a pretty good job, I think.

~~~
jareds
The basic $69 one does not have a speaker. I think the $129 one may though.

------
slg
This type of thing makes me wonder about the business model for authors. An
obvious comparison is the music industry. It is common knowledge that almost
no musicians make a majority of their money from sales of their music (and
only elite acts really make any substantial money). Musicians basically give
away their content in the hopes that it attracts people to their live events.
Authors do the exact opposite and do numerous free events in hopes that it
attracts people to purchase their books. I wonder if this will change over
time or if these business models are caused by the inherit value of the
content vs experience of each form of art. Stand up comedy probably exists in
the middle ground of the two regarding the value of the content vs experience
and standups generally follow the musician business model of giving the
content away to attract people to their live events.

~~~
walterbell
The physical performance of a book is in the user's imagination, a private,
personalized and high definition experience.

------
Shivetya
I would pay something similar just to browse selected sites all month long
without encountering a hundred different pay walls.

for a voracious reader like myself this might be a great money saver depending
on what is excluded. However it is quite possible to have more than you read
for free just by surfing Amazon for all the free ebooks

------
dublinben
Most of these books are available through your local library for free.

~~~
dingaling
> Most of these books are available through your local library for free.

All inter-library loans in my library board cost 1 UKP ( c. $1.40 ) which
quickly mounts-up when there's very little on the shelf in the local branch.

I could read 'Excel 2003 for Dummies' again, I suppose, but I'm a bit bored of
it to be honest...

~~~
dublinben
In the US, many libraries have a system called Overdrive that offers ebooks
(and audiobooks) for borrowing. It's essentially a free version of this
service, but with better selection.

~~~
ctdonath
Hoopla as well.

------
gdilla
This won't have the major publishing houses titles (beyond those who have
agreed to work with Oyster). So no Penguin Random House, the market leader in
print and audio. It also remains to be seen if the subscription model can work
for books - they take longer to consume than movies or music. So you can
imaging slower or busy readers being punished with a subscription unless they
make it through 1.5 books per month which is where it makes sense to buy it. I
don't think many people would like that over their head. Plus there's the
library and used books, and just borrowing - all things we do way less of for
movies and music.

~~~
dingaling
> So no Penguin Random House, the market leader in print and audio

The market leader in print and audio _fiction_.

Fiction is ephemeral - mostly read and then discarded. The awesome potential
for this service is in factual and reference books that are used hundreds or
thousands of time each in their lifetime.

The 1.5 books per month metric is diluted in that case when it's possible to
dip into 100 books per month just to extract the one snippet of information
needed from each.

~~~
e28eta
I think Safari Books Online has been doing well

~~~
bphogan
It's a shame how little the authors of the books see from that service.

~~~
walterbell
Is the royalty structure public?

------
lominming
Amazon Kindle Unlimited is really converging into what I talked about here:
[http://blog.minming.net/post/83447062229/unlimited-movies-
mu...](http://blog.minming.net/post/83447062229/unlimited-movies-music-books-
magazines).

"I feel like there’s an opportunity here for Amazon to provide a all-you-can-
consume digital lifestyle at a fixed subscription price. If we could subscribe
to one single service and forget about every pay-as-you-go service, it would
be quite an attractive proposition."

This is becoming all too real really fast.

------
panzagl
Looks like the same book selection available through the Prime Kindle Owners
Lending Library, which gives you one a month with Prime membership. A nice to
have, but not worth paying extra for to me.

------
gmisra
Here in California, libraries are offering bigger selections of e-books on-
line, which usually come with two restrictions: limited time of readability on
your device, and limited number of copies available (and a waiting list to
manage access). Amazon has historically appeared to support these library
programs, presumably because they make kindles more appealing to the core
"book purchasing" demographic as well.

In the near future I hope to have limited access to all these books for free,
or unlimited access for $9.99 a month, and the ability to easily switch
between the two consumption models. That, for me, would be an easy sell. This
is pretty much how i consume Hulu - most of the time, I just want to watch
recent episodes of the Daily Show and am satisfied with the free tier. And
when I want to get after specific content, I bump up to the paid tier for a
bit.

I don't understand why "some content is always free" model isn't more popular
in the content world. If Netflix offered something like three free movies a
month, I would never "cancel" my account. They would get better brand loyalty,
better app lock-in, and lower customer churn. Instead, I get annoyed at the
always-on subscription model and cycle between subscribed and unsubscribed.

Digitization of content changed distribution patterns, which changed pricing
patterns, and the combination of both changed consumption patterns. It feels
like there is a feedback loop where now it makes sense for pricing and user
management (acquisition, retention) strategies to adapt once again, this time
to changes in user behavior and consumption patterns.

------
JustinCEO
"Enjoy unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks"

@Audiobooks, does this mean they're replacing Audible?

~~~
JustinCEO
Answering my own question a bit, it appears to be "no" (at least short term)
-- there's a new Kindle Books with Narration in Kindle Unlimited category with
only a couple thousand titles
[http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=9630682011](http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=9630682011)

------
ChuckMcM
So they must be testing various parts of the Amazon Prime value proposition as
piecework services. Lets see 'Unlimited {video | kindle | music}' for 9.95
each or get all three for $24.95. Seems Kindle is a safer way to start since
neither Spotify or Netflix is going to respond competitively to book reader
services.

------
scarmig
It seems that you can search which books are going to be available through it,
at last as of this moment

[http://www.amazon.com/s?url=node%3D9578129011&field-
keywords...](http://www.amazon.com/s?url=node%3D9578129011&field-
keywords=#{WHATEVER_YOURE_SEARCHING_FOR})

Selection seems extremely paltry, though.

------
higherpurpose
Awesome. I've been hoping Amazon would do this, since Google or any of their
competitors were too shortsighted to do this for books, even though it was
their _only chance_ to disrupt Amazon and actually take some market share in
ebooks from them. But once again, Amazon is the one innovating and disrupting
itself, even as an almost monopoly.

This should be great for people who want to read a lot of books, and could
even encourage people who only read say 1 book per year, to read a lot more.

------
femto113
This is a pretty awesome deal when you consider it for a whole family. I go
through a couple books a week reading with my daughter (generally in Kindle
format on an iPad). We get what we can from the library, but she really likes
series, and if we finish book 4 while book 5 is still a two week wait to check
out I'll typically just buy it. Throw in my personal reading and my wife's and
we're buying an average of 3-4 books each month.

------
mcintyre1994
This is a pretty awesome price if that audio book catalogue is Audibles. I
signed up for Audible when I started commuting, 1 audio book a month would be
just about right since I wanted to start reading asoiaf.. Turns out they split
the book in 2 and I only got 16hrs in the month unless I paid notably more
than I pay Netflix for unlimited. I decided that was rubbish and cancelled,
unlimited is a much better model and this is an awesome price for it.

------
gmays
I'd love an Audible unlimited. I'm sure it's only a matter of time, though
it'll likely be > $49/mo., which is reasonable.

------
neves
Nothing different than O'Reilly Safari for tech books. At least I sometimes
need to reference old tech books. But do I need to do it for novels?

~~~
smackfu
Shouldn't you buy the tech books, and rent the novels then?

------
flatfilefan
The business is in owning, managing and curating media catalogues, not in
distribution anymore. Almost anyone of us here is capable in setting up a
torrent server and distributing any number of books to any number of
consumers. Same is valid for music and movies.

------
paul_f
This looks scary for authors, and maybe it should. Like digital music and
movies, the marginal cost of an ebook is pretty much zero. If you are an
author, you need to rethink how to make money from your work. It won't be from
selling $10 books much longer.

~~~
walterbell
The following analysis of self-publishing's future is from an author who had
two successful books on self-publishing. Those (excellent) books are now free
on his website. The economics and discovery challenges sound like mobile apps.
And this is before fractional book royalties are introduced.

[http://www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#partyover](http://www.newselfpublishing.com/blog/#partyover)

\---

EDIT: trimmed quote

POD books provided a handsome profit margin even at reasonable prices. But
Kindle books, with their lower prices, have decimated POD sales. Meanwhile,
Kindle customers expect more and more for the low prices they pay. Many feel
cheated if they spend 99 cents or even less on a book that isn’t “full-
length.” And the flood of easily-published books makes it harder and harder
for individual ones to stand out—a problem that can only worsen with time.

The upshot is, if you want to self publish and are new to it, then by all
means, hop in. But for a long time at least, it’s likely to be more for love
than for money. Sure, self publishing is still a money machine—but nowadays,
that’s mostly for Amazon, not authors.

\---

------
ecrotty
There is a lot of reaction on the source by indie authors, including Hugh
Howey, on kboards :

[http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,189900.0.html](http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,189900.0.html)

------
sherbondy
Any idea what the catalogue will be?

Very interested if it includes the kindle editions of the various science and
math textbooks offered.

E.g. having unfettered access to the entire Dover Books on Mathematics series
would be a delight.

------
NickWarner775
The convenience and efficiency of being able to read any book instantly will
be a huge boost for education as well I think more people will start reading
more books due to this product.

------
smackfu
Once you get past the big name books where Amazon is probably subsidizing the
costs, a lot of the content is Amazon-published. I wonder what that
compensation looks like.

------
thrush
Will this compete with Safari Books Online
([https://www.safaribooksonline.com/](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/))?

~~~
troymc
I think Safari Books Online is mostly tech books. Yes, I know it has other
stuff, but Harry Potter? Lord of the Rings? No.

------
ajarmst
"Access to a huge panoply of books that are either in public domain or for
which we're pretty sure most of you wouldn't pay for anyway!"

------
chudi
I think the next step is all you can eat games, we already have movies, books,
music, why not games? It seems easy with platforms like Steam

~~~
dfrey
Future Gamer: "I have access to any game in the world, but all I ever play is
a combat themed hat collection simulator".

------
mkr-hn
Several of the stores Smashwords distributes to have been in this market for a
while. I wonder how they'll react.

------
WCityMike
While this is a neat idea, 600,000 titles seems to me to be a small figure.

------
JimmaDaRustla
Suddenly the disgruntled publishers makes sense.

------
riffraff
how was this leaked?

~~~
PostOnce
"Leaked" now means "intentionally released to the media by the marketing
department"

How this came to be I don't know; leaks are bad. They're unintentional (by the
company) and contain unfinished/unspun/out of context information that can
possibly be detrimental to the company.

Yet people keep using it to mean "press release"

------
xname
I don't understand what other people are complaining for.

Is this price too cheap? WHAT? too cheap? WHAT?

Is this price too expensive? So just don't buy it.

I don't understand.

~~~
taurath
Free is not always better. Sometimes giving up resources increases people's
engagement and perception of value with books and other media.

------
HarrietJones
First they made music a subscription service. And because I like music but I'm
a poor struggling author, I didn't listen to those greedy musicians who said
this was unfair. Screw you musicians. This Fantasy novel isn't going to get
finished unless I can listen to my power-ballad spotify playlist.

Then they made video a subscription service. And because I didn't make videos
(video being a lesser form of entertainment), I didn't complain. In fact it's
great. I get NetFlix for $6.00 a month.

And then they devalued the perceived cost of software with the App Store.
$0.99 for a game that took tens of thousands of hours of work to complete.
Those greedy lazy programmers.

And finally, they came for the books. And I spent nearly a full month writing
this book. And oh, if it doesn't make me furious that Amazon has the gall, and
the temerity to allow people to read it for a fixed monthly subscription.

\- Signed, a.n. author.

~~~
lukeschlather
And oh, if it doesn't make me furious that _my local library_ has the gall,
and the temerity to allow people to read it for _free_.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Libraries are not always easy to get to, have restricted opening hours, often
won't have the latest books available, impose fees if you don't return the
book within a certain period of time, can only supply a very limited number of
copies of each title at one time, and (as pointed out elsewhere) might require
you to be a tax-paying local resident. Libraries have been pretty solidly
proven not to negatively affect the market in new books for all these, and
possibly more, reasons. Kindle Unlimited is a whole other ballgame.

~~~
dminor
Most libraries have ebooks you can "check out" without setting foot in their
building.

