ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Amazon is officially rebranding Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+.
- Audiobooks are becoming a bigger part of the Kindle+ subscription.
- The list of audiobooks will include titles narrated by AI.
Amazon just rebranded its Kindle Unlimited subscription to become Kindle+, and will continue to offer unlimited reading from an eligible Kindle catalog for $12 a month. It will also expand its audiobook category to include more titles, including some read by AI narrators.
Expanded audiobook selection with Kindle+
The upgrade expands the already available audiobook category through the subscription. It’ll also give authors the option to include more eligible audiobooks in Kindle+, including AI-narrated titles.
Amazon hopes to enhance the reading experience by letting users continue their ebooks with virtual narration as they go about their day after putting down their Kindle. Users will now be able to choose from many more available audiobooks, from traditional narrators to those created with Virtual Voice.
Amazon is offering the Virtual Voice service free to authors in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. With Virtual Voice, authors can have their books narrated by AI at no cost, potentially reaching a wider audience.
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The Amazon KDP program lets authors self-publish their ebooks on Kindle and enroll in Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited) to reach more readers. Kindle+-enrolled authors earn money for pages read, not per download. The author’s earnings through Kindle+ depend on the month’s payout rate and the total number of pages read.
Why Virtual Voice may be a problem
As a loyal reader and audiobook listener, I could argue that an AI-narrated book detracts from the human dimension of audiobooks. The service could take jobs away from professional narrators, many of whom have followings of their own.
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While the audiobook experience differs when created by a narrator versus read by AI, authors enrolled in the KDP program may choose to bypass a human narrator for their audiobooks when a virtual narrator is already available for free.
Listening on Kindle isn’t new
However, listening to books has been possible on Kindle devices and the Kindle app for years. Some Kindle Unlimited ebooks already included free access to a professionally narrated audiobook, though not all.
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Kindle accessibility features like Assistive Reader and VoiceView also enabled listening to text read aloud.
The biggest change, however, is that Kindle+ will include more audiobooks than before, giving subscribers more titles to choose from. Simplifying the audiobook creation for authors gives more people the chance to publish new titles.
Most of the subscription is unchanged
There are very few changes to the Kindle+ subscription. Amazon will not increase the price of Kindle+, and users will still be able to borrow books from Kindle+ as they do now with Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle+ is a rebrand, not a new subscription. Readers will get expanded listening options, but the reading experience remains largely unchanged.
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Readers looking for human-narrated and dramatized audiobooks should still use Audible and other platforms, like Libby through their local library, to access them.
