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 includes titles narrated by AI.
Amazon has just converted its Kindle Unlimited subscription to Kindle+, and will continue to offer unlimited reading from an eligible Kindle catalog for $12 per month. It will also expand its audiobook category to include more titles, including some read by AI narrators.
Expand audiobook selection with Kindle+
The upgrade expands the already available audiobook category through the subscription. It also gives authors the option to include more eligible audiobooks in Kindle+, including AI-narrated titles.
Amazon hopes to improve the reading experience by letting users continue reading their e-books with virtual narration as they go about their day after putting down their Kindle. Users can now choose from many more audiobooks available, from traditional narrators to those created using Virtual Voice.
Amazon offers the Virtual Voice service for free to authors in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. With Virtual Voice, authors can have their books narrated by AI for free, potentially reaching a wider audience.
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The Amazon KDP program lets authors self-publish their ebooks on Kindle and sign up for Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited) to reach more readers. Kindle+-registered authors earn money per page read, not per download. The author’s income through Kindle+ depends on the payout rate of the month and the total number of pages read.
Why Virtual Voice can 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 away jobs from professional narrators, many of whom have a following 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 can choose to bypass a human narrator for their audiobooks when a virtual narrator is already available for free.
Listening on Kindle is not new
However, listening to books has been possible on Kindle devices in the Kindle app for years. Some Kindle Unlimited ebooks already include free access to a professionally narrated audiobook, but not all.
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Kindle accessibility features such as Assistive Reader and VoiceView have also enabled to read the text aloud.
The biggest change, however, is that the Kindle+ includes more audiobooks than before, giving subscribers more titles to choose from. Simplifying the creation of audiobooks 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 raise the price of Kindle+, and users can still borrow books from Kindle+ as they do now with Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle+ is a rebrand, not a new subscription. Readers 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 get them.