I joined Amazon Kindle unlimited at the end of January to try out their 1 months free trial.
Right from the start, I thought I would borrow from it to the max
to firstly discover,
Is it really unlimited?
And secondly to see
What the quality of the books on offer in the kindle borrowing library were like.
I borrowed my first 10 books and opened my Kindle reading program which is on my PC.
The archived section had 10 new items showing.
Clicking through they show that they are there but have yet to be downloaded.
I clicked and clicked on each one and eventually it downloaded.
One click seemed to do nothing.
Once downloaded they are in the downloaded folder not the archived section.
Anyway to get to the point..
I now had 10 new books to read.
A quick peruse showed me that 9 out of the 10 were very poor in quality.
One was only 4 pages .
One had terrible grammar and spelling.
How to books really should describe how to actually do what the title states they will.
I speedily read all I needed to of the first 10 books and returned to amazon for 10 more.
You can have any amount of books but only 10 at once so each new book is a replacement for one that you have previously borrowed.
Every day for 1 month I did the same thing and so borrowed between 15 and 25 books a day.
All the books I borrowed were non fiction.
Strategic book authoring
A new idea revealed itself to me.
Not my idea, but that of many of the kindle book authors.
Write a vague book on any subject and just add links to your affiliated pages.!
Some of the books with links, go to empty domains which is not great either.
A second strategy was quite common too and that was the 'series' style books.
They come in 3 flavours.
1 is the Part book. It is part 1 of a series of books all around the same subject for example
circus tricks part 1 circus tricks with balls
circus tricks part 2 circus tricks with knives
circus tricks part 3 circus tricks clowning around
circus tricks part 4 circus tricks acrobatics
Then there are the series but not that different variety for example
Women's hair secrets
Men's hair secrets
Pet's hair secrets
Last of all come the speed written series which relies entirely on the name to sell
For example
how to keep a diary for Barrington rovers fans
how to keep a diary for Collywood scrubs fans
how to keep a diary for Hedgerow united fans
how to keep a diary for Eggbert city fans
Some Authors kindly offer a free book or advice if you click through to their website as a reward for 'buying' their book.
On clicking through it isn't unusual to find that the free book is only available if you type in your email and you are signing up to a newsletter .
Sometimes the link is not to a free book but a subscription to lessons or a paid for book presumably not hosted on Amazon.
Dubious content
During my 1 months trial, I read books which suggested stealing from shops.
Some books talked about selling broken electric items to people at boot sales because they cant check them until they get them home.
One book suggested getting food from food banks even if you can afford to buy it anyway because it is free and easy to get!!
A most unscrupulous author described buying and gutting electrical items and then adding weight,sealing and returning them for the purchase price. I hope he was joking but it was difficult to tell.
It does lead me to believe however, that an ebook submitted to amazon for selling on their website may not actually get looked at before it is offered up for sale.
It wasn't all bad
There were a few gems floating in the scummy waters of the Amazon.
Out of some 400 books that I downloaded and read in my trial time, I came across maybe 20 that I would have liked to re-borrow a second time and ONE that I might possibly have bought .
Value for money?
So is it worth it at £7.99 a month?
Well I would say No.
Not unless you read voraciously and spend more than that every month on books.
A better way to use it would be to go onto Amazon when you are looking for a particular book, check whether it has the ' borrow this book with Amazon kindle unlimited' label and if it does, see if the price for that book is cheaper than one months subscription.
If it is and that is the only book you are after, just buy it
If you need to read several books ,they are all in the unlimited library and you could do so in 30 days, then subscribe for the month .
Obviously you can re-borrow a book that takes longer than 30 days to read but that means subscribing for that next month also.
If it is more expensive to buy it than to subscribe for 1 month and you arent going to read it more than once, then subscribe for 1 month and borrow it to read.
You can delete a book from your device but it is still 'borrowed' until you actively return it or the 30 days runs out.
£7.99 does not buy any of the books remember. If you borrow one, read it and like it, you would need to go back onto Amazon and actually buy it .
Since finishing my trial which ended on the 26 th of Feb , I have bought one Ebook on Amazon.
It was The Goldfinch by Donna Tart and was not included in the unlimited books offered .
In fact no single book that I searched for on first joining, was listed in those that I could borrow.
Anyway,if you are interested to see for yourself, why not give the free trial a try?
Write yourself a message on paper to remind yourself on which day the 30 days runs out and stick it by your computer (or kindle) .
© 2015 theamazingwitteringwench
