There are threads that deal with various online subscription services and with ebooks. As far as I can see there is only one online ebook lending service Kindle Unlimited (KU) operated by Amazon. If anybody knows of another please say so.
The deal is simple; for $13-99 per month (paid monthly) you get unlimited access to the KU library, provided you don’t have more than 10 books out at any time. This limit seems rubbery and sometimes I think I go over it but maybe I can’t count.
The Good
- The library is huge, you will find books on almost any subject. This include many classics as well as contemporary authors.
- Once set up access is almost instant any time of day or night. Can’t sleep and want a new book at 3AM? No worries download from the comfort of your chair or bed.
- The e-reader software for whatever devices you have is free and AFAIK all tablets, phones and PCs are supported. I am unsure about specialised readers. The reader software functions well as a reader on my Android tablet and PC but there are other problems - see below.
- You can register many devices and each can have a copy of your library and they are well synchronised.
The Bad
- Some find the price too much. This is entirely up to you. Most ebooks (whether KU or not) are about $2 to $15 to buy. Some specialised non-fiction and best seller fiction may be more. If you read say 3 books a month on KU you will be in front. I read much more so I save more.
- You do not get access to the full Amazon catalog, many best sellers are not available. This still leaves a huge catalog. You can download and pay for the non-KU books too and read them on the same reader.
- The Amazon catalog is populated with thousands of ebooks, mainly fiction, that are not up to standard either as literary works or in presentation, the chances are that nobody would have published them as they are in hardcopy. This includes books that have not been bothered by a proofreader and are full of errors. This applies to all Amazon ebooks, they appear to take no editorial responsibility at all but just publish what they are given. However, this problem applies to those in KU as well. The reader rating system is very uncertain, I have read books that get all 4 or 5 stars that were rubbish.
- The reader software is integrated with the Amazon web site. But it isn’t done very well. Different functions exist or not and are treated differently depending on how you access the library. The transition from reader to web (to get a new book) and back to reader (to then read it) is not seamless and frequently crashes. You don’t lose anything but have to go back and do it again. This is more an annoyance than a show-stopper.
The Ugly
- The Amazon search engine is an unpolished turd. Just taking books, there is no option to search by title, author or subject as with the usual library software. The lead developer imagined they were clever enough to take a single input string and work it out: they proved that they are not that smart.
Take an example; I used the search string “picture framing”. I input it with the quotes in an effort to restrict to just that phrase. It doesn’t work. Initially I got over a thousand hits. The list included romance novels with bare-chested heroes, how to build a diving robot, how to perform some special kind of tapestry and how to tie strong knots. I managed to shorten the list by applying some extra filters down to 84. I may have excluded some real hits but I wasn’t going through 1000s of them a page at a time. My best guess is there were 7 real hits on picture framing and allied subjects like matte cutting.
It looks to me that this problem of huge numbers of false positives is partly incompetence and partly deliberate. They seem to think if they throw in enough random stuff you will buy something sooner or later and promoted material is compulsory regardless of relevance.
The same applies if you search by author name. They seem to think that if you want to read John Smith then you must also want to read anything by any author whose name includes John or Smith and whose works include anything that could remotely look like the works or subject matter of John Smith. You will get the works by the John Smith you want but they are not necessarily at the top of the list and it can be long!
Summary
If you read a lot and can put up with the flaws in the system it can be very economical and accessible. They have a month free trial to find out but don’t forget to unsubscribe in time if you don’t like it or they will bill you at the start of the second month.
