Amazon Launches Subscription Service For E-Books

Amazon launched a new subscription service for e-books and audiobooks on Friday called Kindle Unlimited.

The service, which will cost subscribers $9.99 per month after a free initial 30-day trial, offers access to more than 600,000 e-books and about 2,000 audiobooks. The reading and listening experiences can be linked through a syncing service.

Such "all you can eat" subscription models have become common for music and video. Amazon now enters into a space already occupied by unlimited reading services such as Scribd, Oyster and Entitle.

Major publishers commonly charge these services a bulk fee upfront for access to their catalogs, plus additional fees each time a user reads a book, according to TechCrunch. They reserve new releases for single sales.

"Amazon is likely looking for a better deal from publishers, or for greater access to current titles, which could be why they aren't included in these test pages," TechCrunch reports.

Amazon has had contentious relations with publishers throughout the e-book era.

Among the titles Amazon has on offer are Life of Pi, the Hunger Games trilogy and the Harry Potter series. Readers can access books through Kindle or any device that has a Kindle app.

"The company already lets users of its Prime premium service to borrow one book each month for no extra charge," CNN notes.