Anyone else thinking of cancelling Kindle Unlimited over changes to magazines?

[Chumpfriend]

Anyone else cancelling their Kindle Unlimited? It costs almost £10 a month now. They’ve made major changes to the magazine subscriptions/availability and the quality of the books available seems to have deteriorated.
i’m sad as I’ve been a long time subscriber but don’t think it really offers decent value any more.

We try to get it when it is on offer for three months at a time.

Apple News have loads of magazines. I don’t know what the subscription is but the news part is great and they seem to have a lot of magazines.

I don’t have kindle unlimited, instead I have put the daily deals page on my favourites and I look at the 99p books every day.

I buy magazines from Zinio and read them on my computer. They often have a deal which is a mini subscription for £1 for three issues.

You can get free magazines on your library app

I got a free trial for a month recently and thought the selection of books was so poor that I cancelled at the end of the month.

I cancelled when the quality of books went down. Occasionally I’ll resubscribe if there’s a book series I want to read. Otherwise I just buy a couple of the 99p books each month. There’s some good popular books on monthly deals. The daily deals vary in quality but spot a good one occasionally

I do the same - I’ve had some real gems on the 99p deals.

I only have Kindle Unlimited when they offer me a free trial. I find I exhaust all the decent books within a week, and then I can’t wait for the trial to end. (I know I could just stop trying to find decent books to read, but I find it difficult to pass up a freebie.)

I’ve found I sometimes read rubbish for the sake of it to be honest. I’ll continue shockingly bad ‘series’ - some of which are almost definitely AI - but in which I’ve become overly invested in the outcome.
Meanwhile, the teetering pile of physical books in my ‘to be read’ pile is frankly embarrassing 🙄🤣

Don’t you find it hard to read the physical books now? I picked up some old books the other day and they’re so fiddly to hold and get comfortable with, and you can’t press the page on a word for the dictionary 😄

I know! My sight’s not great so I really want to be able to enlarge the pages 🤣🙃

Here is a plug for your local library. Get the Libby app and read whatever magazine you want for free. Many libraries have a great selection of digital books as well. I have read over 40 books this year for which I have paid about £5 in total in library reservation fees for books that Libby didn't have.

I use kobo plus instead. There are other options.

I’ve never been a big fan of the magazines on there but I agree about the selection of books. So much AI at the moment, even for series that didn’t previously have them.

I haven’t found a good alternative, though - Libby in my area doesn’t have that many books I’m interested in - so I’m a bit stuck with them. I sometimes get the 99p deals but I’m a fast reader so really need a subscription model rather than buying the books individually.

You can sign up online to libraries not in your area. Some of them make you come in and give address proof but many don't. I have digital cards for my local library, 2 neighbouring counties, and county where I work. Some counties use Libby, others have a bigger selection on Borrowbox. And if you are willing to pay, there are libraries in the US that charge about £80 a year for non resident membership.

We have BorrowBox at our library. It's free and this week I have read Good Housekeeping, Country Life, Country Living etc. Books too but you have to wait until they are 'returned ' and available to borrow again.

Kindle has aggravated me so much that I've just started to go back to the brick and mortar library. It's free and the book selection is a lot better!

Showing my tech ignorance here, but can you only sign up to Kindle books on the kindle?

You can't use a Kindle with Libby in the UK. And as far as I know, you can only use Kindle Unlimited with a Kindle.

To use Libby, you need a Kobo in the UK. Then you get the Libby app on your phone and borrow whatever digital books from the library onto the app. Then you connect your Kobo to the Libby app and you can read your books on the Kobo.

Kobo also has a store where you can buy books (including 99p deals). I have never needed to use it as 90% of the things I want to read are on Libby.

I am on a cheap 3 month trial at the moment but I wouldn’t pay full price. With the daily and monthly deals, I can easily find books i
want to read (and keep) for less than £10 a
month