Amazon Kindle unlimited is it worth subscribing?

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

The harvest

I dug some of our spuds up last week.
I have dug about 1/5th of the whole crop and possibly have 6 weeks supply for 3 adults (2 will only eat them under shotgun circumstances anyway).

Have you tried marrow and ginger jam making?
I did some for the first time this year and it is like eating ginger beer on toast.

My birthday this month was lovely.
OH bought me a brand new laptop!
He also bought me a lovely green cover with a little light  for my ereader .
DS bought me some vouchers to shop with online and a big chocolate birthday cake!

We had fish and chips as a birthday tea too:)
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OH has decided to give up on his OU studies.
He announced yesterday that he had given up as he wasn't able to understand how to do it all.
At the time, he was attempting to recover his computer, having messed it up with a bad update install and I thought he was talking about that.
Really and truly, I have no idea why he had ever started the course in the first place.
He has spent 4 years banging his head in frustration over it while all the time admitting he had no thought to use the resulting qualification in any way.??

Actually I do wonder if it was more about trying to keep up with various sisters who had taken on courses and finished the studying.
One sister who shall remain nameless here (as usual) proclaimed that she was now better than other people who did not have a degree (much to my disgust as you can imagine).
Unfortunately, that is the attitude of quite a lot of snotty people and they live in ignorance of the skills and ingenuity of people everywhere who choose not to go get a piece of paper to 'prove' they can think,talk,breath  and write all at the same time.

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DS, who incidentally has spent 4 years getting his degree, still has no job after 14 months of looking.
DD, having graduated this year, is looking too and so far, nothing, after a false start with a firm who specialized in chugging turned out to be a bunch of sweat shoppers under the guise of charity fundraisers.

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Tablets

Whinge Alert!!


OH really liked my e-reader when he saw me using it.
He looked on Ebay and couldn't find one as good for the money (no shit sherlock) .
So he bought an Android tablet second hand(70 odd pounds).
It didn't work properly so he sent it back and was refunded.
Then yesterday, the new replacement turned up.
This one is brand new and was over £100.

Needless to say, I am not impressed.
I mean I love it, it is small and neat and clever and can do lots of things but why?
He has a Netbook ,a laptop and an android phone.
There is no reasoning with him,he just doesn't bother to answer if he cant justify an expense, he will look on silently until I shut up.

I thought about it for a bit and wondered if I could say the same about my having bought an e-reader.
Was I just being silly and impulsive?

But I honestly can justify my reader.
For a start it was cheap because I mended it myself.
The money to buy it was entirely from surveys.

I already had lots and lots of free books that were on my laptop but were awkward to read because I
couldn't have the laptop on in the bedroom at night in bed. (It is one I got from DD and I  mended by  wiring through the battery connection so it cant work without being plugged in).
OH of course shares the room and has to sleep in the bed  too and a 17" laptop is in the way however you position it.

It can display PDF which is handy as recipes are often put online and I  can print to PDF then take it into the kitchen to follow the instructions which is awkward with a laptop  and takes up loads less room.
I have used it every night since Christmas Eve.

Hobsons Choice

Anyway , it makes me reluctant to spend my squirreled pennies on anything  in which I don't have full choice .

I had planned on buying a new front door from ebay with survey money but when I mentioned it to OH a couple of weeks ago, he went browsing ebay and as usual looks to the absolute top end of what we could afford and then thinks about adding on extras like finishing ,then looks at me as though I am going to say ,okay I will save £ 600 so that we can get the one you choose . Well that is NOT happening.
It would take me more than a month to accrue enough just to get a door sealed for *****s sake,what is wrong with buying the door and sealing it ourselves?

We could buy a new hardwood glazed door for under £200 but shrug, that ain't going to happen.

I give up.

My survey money is going to reestablish itself as mums pin money and that is that.
That doesn't include money saved from the housekeeping of course, that is family money and gets used for unexpected bills and saving.

Always look on The Bright side of Life

Good things that have come from stopping the self employment.

I now have pin money that is considered to be mine,it is trickle pennies but I don't care .
Earnings from self employment were not mine and the choice as to what to spend it on was mysteriously lacking too.
I can stay in bed till 8 am instead of getting up at 6 am.
I get breakfast away from the computer.
I get a lunch break and eat away from the computer.
I have time to cook from scratch every day.
I can sit in the living room and watch TV in the evening.
I get a Saturday and Sunday and if DS wants company into town during the week, I can go.
I am back to bargain hunting when Grocery shopping.
It is cheaper when I go shopping for food! A lot cheaper, less than half the cost of sending OH.
The Garden can get back into production and we will have cheap,organic,fresh fruit and veg.
I have time to exercise every day.
Answering the phone or the front door do not have me doing mental sums to work out how much time/money it  is costing .
We have our dining room back and can eat like civilized people without dropping food down ourselves and being bombarded by the bloody Television. Absolute Bliss!

A quiet weekend.

Our DD is gone back to university.
We are 3 again .
It means less having the dishwasher on, less cooking, less breadmaking.
I shall miss her chats though .

I am still reading my wheel of time ebook, only half way through, they are very long but worth the time .

Today I put the pull up bar back on DD's door frame and managed to do 4 each time I tried a pull up.
It will take time to build back up again.
I did a bit of indoor skipping too.

I am averaging 135 points a day on swag bucks which is nice as it is about £5 a week in Amazon UK vouchers.

I bit the bullet yesterday and ordered my vegetable seeds from the Us Amazon store where I accrue a few vouchers. They should be here by the end of the month.

Bookish Monday

This last week I have been reading
The Towers of Midnight
This is a book from the Wheel of Time series that was devised by the late Robert Jordan.
The latest book is part written by his chosen successor Brandon Sanderson and follows the Adventures of the boys from the Two Rivers, who are now men , and their endeavors to defeat the dark one and stop him  from either wiping out or enslaving the world.
I love these books, they have witches and wizards by other titles.
There is intrigue and religious dogma, war and love and all manner of conflict.
The books still hold the humour of the original Author with ironic twists thrown in every now and then.

Tis the first day of the new year!

Happy new year to anyone who reads this.

At the moment I am watching swagbucks TV and writing this at the same time.
I have Opera as my web browser and when there are 2 tabs open, I click Tile and can have the pages side by side.
So the SBTV can play in one window and I can go to the next video as each one reaches the progress bar point , and still do something else at the same time.

My resolution this year is to get back to frugal earning and veg growing.
I shall also continue with my fitness through exercising and running.

This Christmas my weight has not risen much despite the lack of running.
We were much more sensible about what we ate.
I bought 1 tin of chocolates before Christmas and we received another as a present.
Last year we had 2 tins,received another and also had chocolate oranges.

Today we will have a turkey dinner rather like our Christmas Day meal, with a home made Christmas pud  to follow.

Lunch time was home made bread,crackers, cheese and pate.
Coffee to follow.
The coffee was a free gift from Taylors or Harrowgate.
It is Christmas Blend and is actually very mild which I prefer.

My ebook reader has been busy this week.
So far it has only needed to be recharged once despite daily use for over a week.
I charged it on boxing day and it isnt even 1/4 used yet.


The men have gone for a driving lesson .

squatty Tuesday

I have been neglecting the running just lately.
Today I did 140 squats to keep the old legs in shape.

It is quite cold here, our house seems badly placed to take much advantage of sun shine.
While we ate tea, the front room showed 13 degrees on the electricity monitor.

I have been playing with the mended e-reader a bit today.
I put two books and a PDF file on it and they all read fine.
The transfer was easy,I can either drag books to it just by looking at it in the windows environment or I can open it in the reader program that it installs when you first run it, and put books on it using that.
It can play MP3 too although I most likely wont bother with that as I have a few MP3 players that can play them already.

Next I will make it a cover.
I'm going to hunt around for a hardback with a cover I like and use that.
We have loads of books so I am almost guaranteed to find one in the house, that no one cares about.

DS still hasn't passed his driving test.
He has another go next week.
I am disappointed for him because he is quite careful when he drives and it is just little things that are getting in the way.
Hopefully once he has his full license, he can find a job more easily,at present everything he has applied for has asked for a full license.

Today I was able to request payment on 2 sites!
One is the shop and scan site and the other was valued opinions.
Each one gave an instant link to the £10 voucher I had requested.
I don't need to get anyone presents now so they will be saved for May most likely when my daughter has a birthday unless there is anything we particularly need and Amazon sell in which case, they would go on that.

We have just had the new amount for our insurance on the car and it is quite steep (over £500)so I might try looking for cheaper alternatives or more likely suggest it to OH.

Making old new again!

Goodness a whole week and more has passed me by!

I have been busy with surveys,they always seem to get more frequent at this time of year.
I have had at least 3 a day for the last 6 weeks.
It all goes to help,even the very small ones.

Today I had a bit of a success with my mending en-devours.
I wanted my own e book reader and after buying one second hand for my daughter for Christmas, I thought it would be nice to have my own.

So I looked for broken ereaders on Ebay and found one to bid on.
It was a Sony ereader with a touch screen but the e-ink pad part had become corrupt but it still charged okay.
Anyway,I bought it for £15.
Then I fiddled with it for a week and decided it needed a new e-ink display, so back on Ebay and ordered one from China (Sony are from over there and the screens are only available there) £41 delivered.

It came yesterday (8 days from ordering to arriving) and I was rather horrified to find that it didn't have a back made of sticky plastic .

I would have to rip the old one off its plastic backing and the plastic backing off the metal frame behind it.

It took me 90 minutes to get it all off (it has a thin mirrored glass backing and I cut my fingers with the tiny pieces as they splintered) and then today about 2 hours to clean the plastic back to it glue-less self with WD40.

Then I got a tube of contact adhesive courtesy of poundland (we already had it in the cupboard) and glued the new,terribly fragile looking e-ink display ,onto the plastic and the plastic onto the original frame.

After all that,I had to get it all back in its case in the right place and without damaging the new display.

Well I did it. Turned it on and it worked first time.

I have been singing all afternoon while getting tea started because I am so chuffed that something I set out to do,actually worked.

The ereader has cost me £56 which is a lot for me to spend on myself I suppose but I have learned a huge lot about them in a short time.
I often find PDF's of manuals or instruction books that I would like to download but as the laptop is mains only ,it isn't worth it for the non portability.
I shall try to put some on the reader when it is charged up fully and see how they view.