- Amazon has rebranded Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+
- The rebrand also comes with additional audiobooks, though many of these are narrated by AI
- The price hasn't changed but some users worry it might go up soon
Kindle Unlimited is no more — instead, you’re now a Kindle+ subscriber, as Amazon has just rebranded its ebook subscription service.
The good news is that the price hasn’t changed, and all the features remain the same too. In fact, you’re actually getting more for your money, because — as reported by ZDNet — there are now significantly more audiobooks included.
The bad news is that many of these new audiobooks are narrated by AI, with Amazon’s Virtual Voice allowing authors to create AI-narrated audio versions of their books at no additional cost.
A worrying change
Aside from that, this is seemingly the same as Kindle Unlimited, but the name change has made some users wary that a price increase could follow.
Over on Reddit, one user said “I don’t love it. It’s a signal that things will change and it’ll most likely start with the price,” while in another thread about the change, comments included the likes of “wouldn’t be surprised if there is a price rise in the near future,” and “I’m just glad they didn’t Kindle plus on the price. I was scanning that email and just waiting for them to say there was a price increase. Or is this a soft launch on that later?”
Certainly, there’s reason to worry, especially with Amazon now being able to argue that you’re getting more with the subscription (even if much of that extra is AI-generated).
This could also potentially pave the way for tiered pricing — after all, ‘Kindle+’ sounds like a less complete service than ‘Kindle Unlimited’ before it, so maybe a pricier additional tier will be rolled out at some point.
But on the other hand, Amazon might simply have wanted to get away from the arguably confusing ‘Unlimited’ name, since there were in fact limits to what books were available and how many you could access at once. So it remains to be seen whether this is a simple rebrand or something more insidious.