Ebooks Or Real Books? The Problem With The Amazon Unlimited Library

I read constantly, and I confess, most of the time I'm using my ebook reader. I try to get the best deal possible and when you factor time into the equation it often means reading ebooks instead of real books. A few weeks ago I read about the Amazon Kindle Unlimited Offer for $9.99 a month. The advertising says you can read all the ebooks you want, and keep them as long as you want for just $9.99 a month. To me that sounded amazing. The time and gas I would save going to the library would more than make the service pay for itself.

Well it turns out that I didn't like it that much, and here's why.

It's easy to sign up, the first month is free, you just have to give them your credit card information. I sort of hate this marketing tactic which seems to make money by taking advantage of customers forgetfulness, but whatever, I marked down the date in my calendar so I would remember to cancel my subscription and signed up.

This is the bad part. You know the book your friends have been raving about? Well chances are it's not in the catalog. Hell, even the books your friends were talking about last year aren't in the catalog. Why the hell is that? Because amazon doesn't have distribution rights with Penguin, Harper Collins or any of the other publishers that publish most of the best selling books. Apparently the publishing industry isn't too keen on amazon.

After all, you know why Jeff Bezos named it the Kindle right?

Almost every book I wanted to read wasn't on the list of availible books. I had a long list of books that I mean to read and none of them were on the list. Even older ones.

Many of the books that are on the list are young adult titles. So if you have a adolescent with a kindle it might be the right choice. There are enough young adult titles on the list to keep even the fastest adolescent busy all summer long. And perhaps that's the market that Amazon is aiming for. With the younger generation being more likely to adapt to ebook technology than their older peers it's not likely that it's a coincidence that the amazon library seems to cater to them.

It's not hard to get the membership to pay for itself, the real crux of my dissatisfaction was the fact that the library wasn't being marketed to me. There literally nothing there that I wanted to read. No Gresham, No King, Infinite Jest was not on the list.

Well that's what I think at least. Remember to read our blog to stay up to date on computer repair and tech news in general.