Amazon Kindle Best-Seller List Balloons with New Subscription Service

For those who do not know what a subscription book service is, now is the time to expand your knowledge.

Back in the old days, when there were still physical books- and dinosaurs read them - people joined the Book of the Month Club. For a set fee, you would be sent books on their list.

As you might guess, authors were very keen on getting their books chosen, because subscriptions meant guaranteed sales to thousands of people.

Book clubs have gone the way of literate dinosaurs, but the concept did not completely fade away. Instead it evolved into subscription services. Much like the Netflix model, you can read an unlimited number of ebooks for a monthly fee. The most popular of these services are Scribd ($8.99/mo) and Oyster ($9.99/mo).  

Now Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring with Kindle Unlimited. For $9.99 a month you can read as many of Amazon's 600,000 titles as you like. As with any newly announced Amazon program, there is already some speculation among the cynics in the industry as to whether Amazon is using its new service to manufacture best-sellers, thereby getting the edge on other publishers.

While subscription services are on the rise, there is one important consideration that may limit their benefit to authors. Unlike movies, which absorb 90 minutes of your time, books take a while to read. According to recent statistics the average American read 17 books a year in 2011. So, given a generous two books a month, it would cost $5 to read a book through a subscription service. For readers accustomed to obtaining ebooks for free through Amazon's KDP Select Program, a subscription may not be worth the price.
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How Kindle Unlimited Is Changing the Amazon Kindle Best-Seller List

Digital Book World, July 23, 2014 | Jeremy Greenfield

Kindle Unlimited is minting best-sellers.

According to Publishers Lunch, the number of ebooks on the Kindle best-seller list that are Kindle Unlimited titles has just about tripled since the launch of the all-you-can-read service from Amazon last week. Amazon is counting Kindle Unlimited reads as well as Kindle store sales in its best-seller rankings.

Last week at this time, there were 15 ebooks that would have been part of Kindle Unlimited that were top 100 best-sellers on Kindle; this week, that number has ballooned to 45.

As the chart shows, Amazon Publishing titles (which are in Kindle Unlimited), titles by other publishers included in the service, and Kindle Direct Publishing Select titles (those by self-published authors who only sell on Amazon and not other platforms like Nook and iBooks, which are included on KU), seem to have all benefited greatly from being a part of Kindle Unlimited. Books by self-published authors who aren’t exclusive to Amazon and those from publishers not participating in Kindle Unlimited have suffered — at least when it comes to hitting top-100 Kindle best-sellers.

While Kindle Unlimited it still new, the reason for its big influence could be the clever way in which Amazon is marketing the service to readers.

Read the rest of this article here.