I don’t know about you folks but I’m sick and tired of seeing Kindle Unlimited advertised all over the place whenever I’m shopping for Kindle ebooks.
The number one thing that irritates me about the whole thing is how Amazon deceptively highlights the $0.00 price for Kindle ebooks that are available as part of their Kindle Unlimited subscription plan.
On product description and search results pages the first thing you see is “Kindle Edition” and $0.00.
But the ebooks aren’t really free. That’s only for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
This isn’t new. Amazon has been doing things this way for awhile.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now. But it still tricks me from time to time because they purposely make it so that you see “Kindle Edition” and “$0.00” before you see the actual price, making you think it’s free when it’s really not.
Saying that a book costs $0.00 for Kindle Unlimited subscribers is also deceptive because subscribers aren’t purchasing the ebooks—they’re just borrowing them until they return them. You don’t get to “buy” or keep the book; it goes away for good once you stop paying the monthly subscription fee.
Sorry for the rant but I’m sick of having to see $0.00 for the Kindle Edition listed in search results and on product pages before seeing the real price. It would be so much better if they would just say “Free on Kindle Unlimited” instead of showing a deceptive $0.00 price for a product that’s not even technically being purchased.
It’s interesting how some companies constantly insist on promoting certain things that aren’t very popular, like they’re trying to force something on people whether they want it or not, like Google with their Google+ that nobody wants to use.
Me too. Except it ought to be “Read free on Kindle Unlimited”. Its price is not $0.00 nor “free” because your are not “buying” it.
Amen. Couldn’t have said it any better myself. This is just one more reason why I’ll continue to try and avoid doing business with Amazon when shopping for ebooks.
As an Amazon Prime member, I constantly look for books being offered to Prime members, and there is a big deal of overlap with Kindle unlimited. Using a second wishlist only for Prime ebooks, I have currently only 57 ebooks on that list, compared to over 1200 on my other wishlist (with some other items and some ebooks already bought), so I can safely say, a lot of books I REALLY want to read are not available with Amazon Prime nor Unlimited, and for that reason alone I think paying extra for Unlimited will not be worth it.
Also, if you look at the books which are available, you can often find a 99 ct, or free deal. If you are able to wait for it. And if not, even in the examples the ebooks are often under Us$ 5, as in the examples above. So you must read way more than 2 books a month from the limited supply to get your moneys worth from Unlimited.
I got messed up by that once and had to contact CS to return the book immediately. I’m more careful now, but I agree it’s really annoying. At this point, I’m not interested in KU, but I’m really glad to know that if I stop paying for it, anything I’ve downloaded will disappear. Thanks for the heads up on that!
Thank You.. I just was checking it out to see what”the catch” is..(I’m old enough to be very suspicious of anything for free).. sure/nuff.. same old story!
i have never been deceived by it. I was an early adopter of Kindle Unlimited and see it as a ten buck per month library specializing in ebooks. I borrow enough to get back my money and some of the self-published stuff is so bad I am glad I don’t have to keep it! But I have also been introduced to some very fine writers this way. My public library’s ebook collection runs heavily to bodice-rippers, so this service is worth it for me, and I like “free” as much as anybody.
I use the unlimted plan all the time I check out what I want to read then read it and check it back in. So I use it like I would a library. What is wrong with that.
Nothing’s wrong with that at all. It works great as an alternative to a library, especially for people that read more than one or two books per month. But libraries don’t advertise their books as costing $0.00 for members and $x.xx for non-members as Amazon does with Kindle ebooks. The $0.00 price is larger and more in the focal point on product pages than the real price—that’s the main thing I’m complaining about, especially when the $0.00 price implies a purchase is being made, when that’s not the case at all for subscribers.
Nathan, I have almost fallen for this deception and wish Amazon would correct it for the Prime movies too.
And the crazy thing is that for non-US members who use the US Amazon site, we also see this $0.00. Hey Amazon, KU is not even available in my country.
Agreed. I keep falling for it every time, “OMG, I got lucky and caught a book on the perfect day–oh wait.” All because on very rare occasion, I have just mindlessly browsed, found an interesting title, and it was either free or heavily discounted that day.
That’s how I ended up signing up for Kindle Unlimited.. Especially since I was also interested in children’s books and specific topics: poetry, etc. Hard to find truly free books in those categories..