Amazon has renamed its reading subscription: Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+. The new name comes with a more concrete change, a larger audiobook library included in the plan. For current subscribers, the service stays the same, with the same price and borrowing rules.
According to Amazon, Kindle+ still offers access to millions of ebooks, along with thousands of audiobooks, comics, manga and magazines. The official announcement says readers can borrow up to 20 titles at a time, including digital books, audiobooks or comics, to use in the Kindle app on iPhone, iPad and Kindle devices. Reading history, bookmarks, notes and saved titles carry over automatically to the new name.
Image: Amazon — https://read.amazon.com/landing
The most significant part concerns audiobooks. Amazon has added titles with Virtual Voice, its AI narration tool, which lets self-published authors on Kindle Direct Publishing produce an audio version of their book at no extra cost. The plan also includes human-narrated titles, which authors can enroll in Kindle+ through the KDP Select program. According to the sources, the audio library has expanded substantially, though no exact number of new titles was given.
In the United States the price remains $11.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial for new members. The audio additions, however, are for now available only to US subscribers, with an international rollout announced for a later phase and no specific date. For the Italian market, the closest source reports a price of 9.99 euros a month and confirms only the already known features, with no official confirmation about audiobooks.
The choice to bet on synthetic-voice audio fits a strategy Amazon has pursued for some time, as covered in Amazon sacrifica i modelli Nova per un unico sistema di frontiera, where the company is reorganising its AI investments. On the competitive side, Spotify estenderà gli audiolibri a oltre 180 mercati is widening its audio offer on a global scale.
The next step to watch is the arrival of the audiobooks in European markets, Italy included, and how authors respond to the new Virtual Voice terms.
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