Created by the popular but often controversial company Amazon, the humble Kindle eReader and its associated ebooks have revolutionized and permanently shifted the trajectory of the book and publishing industry. Following the success of the rapidly growing ebook market, in 2014 Amazon introduced their digital subscription service Kindle Unlimited. Now if you somehow stumbled on to my book blog, you’re likely quite familiar with ebooks and Kindle Unlimited so I can likely cut this intro blurb and get right into the nitty-gritty details.
But for those unfamiliar with Kindle Unlimited (I’ll be shortening it to KU for the rest of this review), KU is a subscription service that promises a huge selection of ebooks, free to access and read with no limitations on how long you can keep them for compared to the similar Libby/Overdrive system offered by Libraries. While you can technically download and read an unlimited number of ebooks from Amazon’s rotating selection, you can only access and read them for as long as you have an active KU membership. Instead of paying a licensing fee per purchase (aka Amazon’s version of “buying an ebook”), the monthly payment gets you blanket access to Amazon’s huge library akin to Netflix access. Prime members also have another much smaller selection they can read and borrow from under “Prime Reading”, but this platform has many more restrictions and the selection is so poor, it’s not really relevant for this discussion.
Ignoring any promotional discounts Amazon frequently offers, at $11.99 a month is KU worth the subscription cost? How is the book selections? Is it a crime to support the conglomerate empire that is Amazon as vocal individuals on social media raise their pitch forks against their increasingly restrictive policies? While I won’t be be touching on that last one very much, I recently used a three month free trial promo when I purchased a new Kindle device early this year and thought I’d share my experiences with it (Feb – May 2025).
Unlike other reviews written by other news organizations with click-bait worthy titles that are too generalized or generic to be helpful, I’ll be doing a more in-depth dive in the books I read specifically and crunch some numbers to show whether $11.99 is a good deal for most readers. To jump to my personal calculations, jump here.
Pro’s:
+Instant Readability:
I am a frequent user of both my local library’s physical book rentals as well as their Libby/Overdrive selections which are a wonderful service to have and use. I’m a huge believer of public library systems and strongly recommend people utilize them for fear of them being cut with the direction State and Federal budgeting programs are heading (don’t believe libraries support authors monetarily? Check out literary agent Ben Grange’s excellent breakdown of library royalties). That being said, despite my local library having an outstanding selection of new and popular books punching well above its size, any library user will know that sometimes it can take a long time to get a particular book in-hand in addition to having to finish it within the short rental period. While KU functions similarly where you don’t own the books you’re reading, you’re technically not borrowing books and therefore can access any book in their catalogue at any time for as long as you want. There’s something so liberating and fun with browsing the Kindle Unlimited selection, seeing a cool book, and being able to read it instantly (once downloaded to your device that is) for “free”. The flexibility of reading something new at any time is truly freeing, and this is particularly good benefit for those that aren’t looking for a specific book and just want to find something new or for book inspiration.
+Huge Rotating Selection:
It goes without saying that the KU catalog of books is enormous. I actually also consider this as a negative drawback later in this review, but the catalog of books is so big that it’s sometimes hard to get around. Like any subscription service like streaming providers, no content lasts forever on any platform so books may periodically come and go, but that also means every month there will be new additions to check out.
Of all the digital book subscriptions out there, KU is undoubtedly the biggest and the most robust. I was also pleasantly surprised to see KU also have some very popular and well-known books available such as the Rebecca Yaros’s Empyrean series (though Onyx Storm was released during my free trial and wasn’t included). I’ve also seen books published by moderate to small traditional publishers immediately launch on KU at or soon after the publication date which makes accessing them quick and painless. Amazon doesn’t allow you to browse KU’s selection without subscribing, but you can check whether a particular book is available by looking it up on the Amazon product page and see if a KU option is listed.
+Limitless for Heavy Readers
Due to having no cap on the number of books read or downloaded per month, KU is obviously worth more for readers that read a lot of books, aka binge or marathon readers. Particularly for power readers that go through multiple books a week, KU is clearly a much better deal vs someone who reads only a few books periodically. KU’s catalog of books is massive so there’s never going to be shortage of things to read (though there may be a shortage of “popular” books to read) and the one-cost approach means you’re in control of how much you utilize it.
As an important side note, I will break down some numbers to show at roughly what point KU is a better monetary deal vs buying the ebook directly below, though I do not consider myself a marathon reader by any means. Amazon’s frequent ebook sales and recent restrictive moves towards a closed ecosystem further complicates this discussion, but in simplest terms you will likely need to read at very least 3-4 books per month to make KU worth the cost.
+Great Indie + Queer Literature Selection
While Amazon’s publishing and royalty payment plan has its supporters and critics which is a debate for another day, but for us book consumers and readers, KU has a good selection of Indie and self-published works available. There are quite a lot of books that frankly would’ve been hard to find in-person or never been published in any capacity if not for the KU platform. Surprisingly Amazon’s personalized algorithm also doesn’t shove them to the bottom of the list or purposely hide them either. A perfect example of this is Isabel Murray’s M/M romcom Not That Complicated that I read based on an algorithm suggested (I read this via Prime Reading but the series is also available on KU). After enjoying the first book, I went on to read the other two via KU. I definitely would’ve never heard of this series, let alone read it have I not had KU.
Also unexpectedly, KU has a strong catalog of queer literature and will actively promote them if it thinks you’ll enjoy them based on your reading history. I for one had no idea there were so many queer YA novels out there and was pleasantly surprised by how many were also available on KU. I don’t actively read as many other minority voices reads such as those based on cultural or ethnic backgrounds, so I can’t quite comment on KU’s selection there.
+Potentially Good Royalty Payments for Authors?
I’m not going to go too in-depth with this as there are far better articles and discussions out there written by those more familiar with the publishing industry. However, what I will touch-on is how the KU platform can benefit new or self-published authors. As a subscription service, KU’s billing and royalty payments work very differently from traditional publishers where authors get a very small percentage of each ebook or printed copy sale. Authors are instead given royalty payments calculated by the number of pages read or at least skipped through by KU subscribers. While they get nothing if a KU subscriber downloads their book but doesn’t read it, for medium to longer length books with high page counts, authors can potentially earn more vs if they were paid per purchase. This is a particularly important point for indie or unknown authors who may typically have very few actual sales. By being offered for “free” via KU, readers can download a book to try with no risk involved compared to an upfront purchase, leading to potentially more readership. And while I can’t say all KU subscribers do this, I will often purchase an ebook license/copy or a physical printed copy of books I really enjoy via rental/borrowing services like KU.
Cons:
-Unlimited but Not Permanent
Like streaming services, none of the books read or downloaded via KU are permanent or yours to keep. While KU will not limit your downloads as long as you have an active subscription, as soon as you cancel the subscription, you will lose access and cannot open any of the books. If you have an actual Kindle ereader, you can technically get around this by setting your kindle to airplane mode and never letting it connect to wifi or the internet. However you will perpetually lock the device as-is and will be required to side-load every book via USB. This obviously will not work for people that read via the Kindle app on a smartphone or tablet/ipad since all the other capabilities and apps will be unusable without internet access.
-Books May Be Removed from KU
Somewhat related to the above point, at any time a book could potentially be removed from KU as well as any device it’s been downloaded to without warning. While it’s very unlikely to happen to most subscribers, like any subscription platform, the content library is always changing. Amazon routinely rotates books offered via KU or may have to pull books off of KU or their entire platform due to contractual limitations or publishing issues. Should this occur, you will likely need to purchase the book to continue reading, assuming it’s still available on the Kindle platform at all.
-Huge Library Filled with Low-Profile Books
While Amazon heavily markets how big their KU catalog is, realistically a good amount of that catalog is made up of low-profile books or indie published releases. While I am a supporter of indie authors and self-published work (see my previous ARC reviews and review policy), there’s frankly a lot of really mediocre and questionable stuff on KU. In today’s modern age of publishing, it’s entirely possible for almost anyone to put something out there but whether it’s had proper editing or is worth reading is a whole different story. You can go through pages and pages of search results, suggested books, or categories full of middling generic books with little to no quality control or oversight that would typically be limited by traditional publishers. This not only makes it potentially harder to find certain books, but can also be discouraging for a reader, having repeatedly picked up interesting looking books only to be let down by questionable writing (case and point my Dad who now has a Kindle Library specially curated by me).
-Kindle Interface On Mobile/Kindles is Poor
While KU’s library itself is good, getting around within it is awful. Unless you have a particular book or author in mind that you can manually search for, it can be very difficult navigating around the different categories and books. Now this is a general issue for Amazon’s Kindle Store, not specifically KU’s subscription, but it’s clunky to the point of barely being usable. The experience is even worse on Kindle ereaders themselves which have less powerful processing power and are slow to load new menus and refresh changes. I currently read on a Kindle Colorsoft which is part of the current 12th gen of Kindle devices with top of the line specs and I actively avoid browsing on the Kindle Store (11th gen kindles and older, good luck). Instead, I use a web browser for browsing books but even that isn’t the greatest to use. Amazon’s website has a pretty great KU platform page that suggests specific books based on your past reading history however that is far more powerful and useful than the version on the mobile/eReader devices.
For me specifically, I particularly hate how the Kindle Store lumps sci-fi, fantasy, romantasy, and even some speculative fiction novels under one SFF category. While the whole discussion over the book industry’s obsession with romantasy is a huge debate that I’m not going into here, romantasy’s prevalence and classification under the SFF umbrella makes it almost impossible to find straightforward epic/high fantasy books. Trying to find a sci-fi book is even more difficult and at this point should probably be separated into its own genre category. I was on a sci-fi reading kick right before I started my free trial of KU and for the life of me I struggled to find sci-fi options through the flood of romantasy, much of it being extremely generic and poorly presented.
-You Need to Read A Lot To Get Your Moneys Worth
I’ll be going into more detail below, but KU is only worth it for readers that have the time and dedication to read their money’s worth of books. While this may not necessarily bother casual or fast readers, I constantly felt a subconscious need to read faster or hurry through books in order breakeven with KU’s subscription cost, which is quite silly considering I was trying it out on a free trial. However, as a reader who likes to immerse myself in books and closely study what I read for each of my long-form book reviews, this unconscious feeling to rush through books often detracted from my reading experience. Particularly for middle of the road books or those that have slower or meticulous pacing, their pacing and length becomes even more noticeable (this may have affected my enjoyment of Gideon on the Ninth specifically and the first half of Iron Flame).
-Frequent ebook Sales Lower KU’s Value
Something often overlooked with ebooks is the frequency of which they go on sale. Both physically printed books and ebook sales are largely driven by book publishers, and their prices are usually set accordingly. But many popular books frequently are heavily discounted if you’re patient and aren’t in a rush to read a certain book immediately. There are price trackers out there that are useful for tracking book prices over time and if you’re resourceful, buying ebooks on sale tends to be a much better cost value for the vast majority of readers. Not only do you get to keep a license/copy of the book perpetually, but it can also be cheaper, again unless you’re reading a lot of books.
In addition to sale discounts, many indie or self-published novels are generally priced lower than traditionally published books to begin with. While not indicative of the book’s quality in anyway, these lower priced books at $5 or less are sometimes a better deal when purchased outright vs reading via KU.
KU Value? Let’s Crunch Some Numbers
I talked about the cost of ebooks, frequent sales, and the high number of books you need to read in order to breakeven and make KU’s $11.99 worth, but what does that actually look like? There’s a lot of factors in play but I’m going to use my own reading journey during my 3 month trial of KU for a real-world example.
Firstly, these are the books that I read during my KU free trial. While I believe I read more books than the average reader, my reading queue is compromised of physically purchased books and special editions, ARC books, physical and digital library rentals, and finally ebooks purchased through the Kindle store or other platforms. For this example, here’s what we’ll be working with (KU books only):
Books Read in February:
Not That Impossible (Not That #2) by Isabel Murray
Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy #1) by Callie Hart
Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yaros
Not That Ridiculous (Not That #3) by Isabel Murray
Books Read in March:
All That’s Left In the World by Erik J. Brown
Lose You to Find Me by Erik J. Brown
Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #1) by Tamsyn Muir
Books Read in April:
The Nightmare Before Kissmas (Royals and Romance #1) by Sara Raasch
Iron Flame (The Empyrean #2) by Rebecca Yaros
Go Luck Yourself (Royals and Romance #2) by Sara Raasch
Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) by Martha Wells
Now let’s calculate the cost of each book if they were purchased via ebook instead of being read through KU. It’s important to note that some of these books I would NOT have purchased myself and only read them because they were available via KU or were on my to be read list on Libby already. With that we have the following:
February:
Not That Impossible $3.99
Quicksilver $11.99
Fourth Wing $14.99
Not That Ridiculous $3.99
Total: $34.96
March:
All That’s Left In the World $13.99
Verity $13.99
Lose You to Find Me $14.99
Gideon the Ninth $9.99
Total: $38.97
April:
The Nightmare Before Kissmas $12.99
Iron Flame $14.99
Go Luck Yourself $12.99
Exit Strategy $11.99
Total: $52.96
If we look at the three months or reads, every month’s regular price ebook purchases comes out to be substantially higher than KU’s subscription price of $11.99, looks pretty promising for KU! Of those listed, it’s important to note that Not That Ridiculous and Go Luck Yourself were brand new books that were recently published and immediately made available on KU at launch. Some authors like Rebecca Yaros are notably published by Amazon’s publishing which has far more control over what gets added to KU.
However, if we look at discounted prices of every book listed, there’s some very interesting numbers in play. For the sake of this discussion, I’ve also used price tracking to determine the lowest cost each of the books were sold at and the how recent they were listed at that price:
Lowest Sale February:
Not That Impossible $2.99 01/29/25
Quicksilver $2.99 12/01/24
Fourth Wing N/A
Not That Ridiculous N/A
February Total: $24.96
March:
All That’s Left In the World $1.99 03/19/25
Lose You to Find Me $1.99 02/22/25
Gideon the Ninth $2.99 05/31/23
Total: $6.97
April:
The Nightmare Before Kissmas $2.99 02/17/25
Iron Flame N/A $14.99
Go Luck Yourself N/A $12.99
Exit Strategy $10.99 01/25/25
Total: $41.96
Interestingly, all three months are completely different and range widely in costs. February’s picks are split discounted while Fourth Wing inflates the cost as the Empyrean series has never gone on sale in ebook format to date. Not That Ridiculous also has never been on sale as it’s a new release. March’s books were neither newly published and all were traditionally published outside of Amazon’s imprints. Despite reading three sizable books, we actually could’ve saved money by buying these outright instead (except Gideon which has rarely gone on sale vs the other two). April is yet another case of almost nothing going on sale due to being Amazon published or newly released, and Exit Strategy being an unusual case of having only light sales due to the series’ recent spike in popularity thanks to the Apple TV adaptation.
While this example is a bit all over the place, the main takeaway point is that depending on what you’re reading, the potential savings of reading books through KU can vary wildly. If you’re a hardcore reader and don’t care about savings, by all means read away! But for those that are trying to be more budget conscious in the currently challenging economy, this is just some food for thought. As previously covered, I averaged 3-4 books within KU per month. If you read less than I do or read both physical and ebook combined, that will heavily affect KU’s perceived value.
Final Thoughts
So after all that discussion and a bit of math, is KU worth subscribing to? Potentially but only if you read a lot or are flexible in what you’re reading. I’ve seen some people rave about KU while others think it’s a waste, there’s a lot of factors that affect its worth.
For me, I personally opted not to renew my KU subscription after the three month trial is up. While it was a fun experience that encouraged me to binge read more than I normally would, that subconscious need to read my money’s worth took away some of the joy in reading or made my hobby more stressful than it should be. I’ve also have greatly increased the number of advanced reader copy books I’m reading and reviewing, my KU trial definitely put me behind on my ARC reading schedule that I had to catch up on in June. I originally started writing this article back in June but since then, I’ve also fell down the rabbit hole of Special Edition book box subscriptions as well as joining the Aardvark Book Club which has added a huge number of physical printed book to my to be read queue. All in all while I still read many ebooks, I have too much of a surplus of books and varied reading material to make full use of KU and am better off just buying ebook licenses/copies instead. That said, one of my friends who’s also an avid reader who also heavily uses their library card and Libby ebook rentals is looking to resume their KU subscription so it all varies!