Kindle Unlimited: eBook flatrate with more than one million titles – H

Image: Amazon

launched in July 2014 in the US, Amazon’s reading Flatrate was about three months later in Germany available. For a price of 9.99 euros monaltichen readers can access an offer with 650,000 e-books. After ten months of the rental service has now in this country exceeded the one million mark for the first time.

also fell, the number of titles published: Was it the famous title of German publishers already ordered not very good at the start of Amazon’s rental service, accepted the offer over time steadily. According to Matthias Matting, Chairman of the German Self Publisher Association, this reduction is part of Amazon entirely intentional: “ Amazon has apparently found that particularly expensive titles are read more often, and this step by step from the offer away “. As a result, the offer includes so mainly titles from independent authors, so that the average prices of the Kindle Unlimited titles have fallen. For Amazon, this in turn means an increase in earnings, conversely subscribers have now read significantly more books, so that the monthly price rate.

In addition, Matting is of the opinion that Kindle Unlimited for Publishers increasingly unattractive going: So are publishers, which today offer their books at the rental service, are only paid a standard fee and after Amazon “had lured to start with very attractive terms ” this. But even if the number of well-known titles fades, Kindle Unlimited has been growing – it is assumed that ten percent for each month. Thus, the selection of self-published titles seem to be enough to attract more and more readers. From a study published in the May 2015 survey by the US market research firm Codex Group showed that while in the United States other rental services suffered a decline of up to 30 percent, Kindle Unlimited constantly grew, which the service thus transported to the top of the rental services.

Kindle Unlimited – rental service with more than one million titles

However, criticizing Kindle Unlimited was not saved. Already spent the year an increasing number of well-known indie authors from the rental service. The reason was partly a dramatic decline in sales of their works for many. So had to among others the well-known indie author HM Ward suffered a slump in their sales revenues of 75 percent. Only when she took her books from the service, sales rebounded. On July 1, Amazon also introduced a new remuneration system for authors who publish their works on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), a. Until then, a book has already been paid when it was read to ten percent or more. With the new system, however, Amazon paid borrowed books on the number of pages read. This led to sharp criticism of authors’ associations, including the Association of German writers (VS).