Never let it be said that Amazon doesn’t know how to disrupt an industry, after all it took on the traditional brick and mortar book stores when they started shipping practically any book you wanted to your door. Then came along the Kindle, further shaking up the book world, and potentially ridding the world of paper books. Of course, that’s not what happened as there are many people out there more than happy to continue reading this thing called paper – myself included – but Amazon’s offerings just keep on getting better and better. In the UK, Amazon is now launching Kindle Unlimited, a Spotify for bookworms that lets you read as much as you want for just £7.99 a month.
The service launched earlier this year in the States, and it’s a pretty big deal to see it launch in the UK, where a paperbook book release costs at least £5.99 in High Street stores. As such, we can see Amazon’s new service becoming popular with Kindle owners as well as those that are still on the fence. Being able to simple add whatever you like to your library without any extra cost is one of the big draws of Google’s All Access service for music and the mechanic arguably makes more sense for books. There’s a free trial that you can sign up for, which lasts for 30-days, when you’re part of Kindle Unlimited you’ll see “Read for £0.00” next to any included books you want to read. That alone might be enough to get some people to make the jump.
While there are currently 650,000 or so titles included, Amazon is keen to add more and the list of over half a million titles does include some of the bigger names right now. Jorrit Van der Meulen, VP of Kindle Europe, had this to say on the new service “With unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of titles, Kindle Unlimited offers by far the simplest and most cost-effective way to explore and discover eBooks and audiobooks together, and you can even switch from reading to listening without losing your place.” £7.99 a month is certainly an attractive offer, and with a 30-day trial on offer as well, it’s safe to say that Amazon might be selling more Kindles this Christmas than the year before.