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A Kindle Unlimited Audible Wish List Experiment
July 20, 2014 - 9:00pm

Did you sign up for the free one month trial of Kindle Unlimited?

The real value of Kindle Unlimited, at least for me, will be the degree to which Audible (owned by Amazon) audiobooks are included.  If there is one Audible book a month that I want to read then a monthly $9.99 subscription will be worthwhile.

The initial quality Audible of titles available in Kindle Unlimited appears to be somewhat lacking.  The hope is that Amazon will be able to utilize its quasi-monopology power in the digital book market to get those pesky publishers to fall into line.  

Until that happens, and more Audible books are added to the catalog, is Kindle Unlimited worth the money?

To check this out, I looked at the first 100 books in my Audible wish list (out of 703) - the audiobooks that I'd like to read but have not done so yet.

Of these first 100 titles, 5 are available to read (Kindle) and listen to (Audible) for free under the Kindle Unlimited plan:

  • Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation Napoleon's Hemorrhoids…And Other Small Events That Changed History
  • The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History from the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon
  • Worst Ideas Ever: A Celebration of Embarrassment
  • Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

The other 95 audiobooks in my Audible wish list are not included in the Kindle Unlimited plan.  

I’ll share the list of these books below, and I’m hoping that you will help us analyze the value of Kindle Unlimited.

Does a 5 percent overlap justify the $9.99 price?

Perhaps it makes sense to look beyond an Audible audiobook wish list.   A next step would be to compare the Amazon Kindle wish list to what is available in the Kindle Unlimited plan.

My guess is that it will be a difficult sell for Amazon to convince publishers to get on board with audibooks for the revenue share available at $9.99 a month.  

One idea would be to create an Audible / Kindle Platinum plan, with the subscription route starting on the Audible side.  I already pay the equivalent of $9.56 a book for the Audible Platinum plan, and I give Audible by $229.50 up-front.   (Which lasts for 24 months, so Audible even has a good idea when they will get more of my money).

I’d pay more money if Kindle books were included in the Audible Platinum plan.  

Alternatively, Audible would get more audiobook listeners to sign-up for this plan if they bundled Kindle books in at the same price.  

Here is my wish list of audiobooks in my Audible wish list that are not covered by the current Kindle Unlimited plan: 

  • Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success
  • Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick
  • California: A Novel
  • The Heist
  • Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp - on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics
  • The Road to Reinvention: How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation
  • Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-Win Negotiation
  • Big Picture Economics: How to Navigate the New Global Economy
  • The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults
  • Lock In
  • The Tastemakers: Why We_re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue
  • The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death
  • Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value
  • Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
  • The Magician's Land: The Magicians, Book 3
  • To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure
  • U.S. Marshals: Inside America's Most Storied Law Enforcement Agency
  • American Panic: A History of Who Scares Us and Why
  • The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure
  • Sleep Donation: A Novella
  • Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
  • The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
  • "Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West"
  • You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves
  • Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
  • If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities
  • Circling the Bases: Essays on the Challenges and Prospects of the Sports Industry
  • Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
  • What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night
  • The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
  • Money: The Unauthorized Biography
  • Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  • The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
  • The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way, and It Wasn_t My Fault, and I_ll Never Do It Again
  • Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds
  • An Officer and a Spy: A Novel
  • The Triple Package: Why Groups Rise and Fall in America
  • The Turning Point: Creating Resilience in a Time of Extreme
  • To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
  • Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia
  • Remote: Office Not Required
  • Baby Bust: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family
  • How to Sweet-Talk a Shark: Strategies and Stories from a Master Negotiator
  • Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
  • Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
  • The Necessity of Strangers: The Intriguing Truth About Insight, Innovation, and Success
  • Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
  • The Incrementalists
  • What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire
  • The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections
  • Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential
  • Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy
  • What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!
  • The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
  • The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success
  • How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life
  • Who Owns the Future?
  • Megachange: The Economist
  • You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself
  • The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade
  • Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants
  • With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830
  • Fate of the States: The New Geography of American Prosperity
  • I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)
  • Ship It Holla Ballas!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used theInternet to Become Poker's Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew
  • "American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics"
  • Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep
  • The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy
  • Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to aBillion-Dollar Online Poker Empire - and How it All Came CrashingDown...
  • Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by GreatScientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe
  • Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last
  • Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity
  • What if Latin America Ruled the World?
  • Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal
  • Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas
  • Life After Life: A Novel
  • The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World
  • Sportonomics
  • Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology
  • The Next American Economy: Blueprint for a Real Recovery
  • Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload
  • Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
  • The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America
  • Infinite Progress: How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance, Disease, Poverty, Hunger, and War
  • Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave
  • The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India
  • The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does
  • The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?
  • Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration
  • The Coming Jobs War
  • The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
  • Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer
  • My American Revolution: Crossing the Delaware and I-78

 

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