Amazon
Kindle Unlimited is that “other” service that Amazon operates — it’s a subscription service for ebooks, but confusingly, it’s different from Prime Reading, which is included with Amazon Prime. The main difference? Kindle Unlimited gives you access to well over a million books (as opposed to just a thousand with Prime Reading) and costs $10 per month. There’s never been a better time to try it out, because from now till the end of the year, you can join Kindle Unlimited and get two months for free — a $20 value.
If you’re still not crystal-clear on the difference between Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited, I hardly blame you. Here’s the deal: If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you get Prime Reading thrown in as one of the many side benefits. Amazon has an ever-rotating library of 1,000 ebooks you can borrow from. You can check out up to 10 books at a time — to get an 11th book, you need to return one. Prime Reading includes magazines, comic books and more, and also includes books with Audible narration.
Kindle Unlimited is all of that. But instead of 1,000 titles, Kindle Unlimited has over a million, and that in a nutshell is why Amazon charges $10 per month for it. But that million titles is still just a fraction of all the books Amazon has on its virtual shelves, and you might be surprised to find that a lot of that million turns out not to be contemporary best-sellers, but self-published titles in the Kindle Direct publishing program. Of course, there are some contemporary titles in the Kindle Unlimited program, but don’t expect to be able to check out everything on the New York Times bestseller list, week in and week out.
So should you go for it? Well, it’s two months for free, so that seems like a slam dunk. You get two months to try out Kindle Unlimited and see if it’ll still make sense for you when it costs $10 per month. Have you ever tried Kindle Unlimited? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Watch this:
How to check out digital library books
1:08
CNET’s deal team scours the web for great deals on tech products and much more. Find more great buys on the CNET Deals page and check out our CNET Coupons page for the latest promo codes from Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon and more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page.
