In 2018, community sites took turns covering a book every week. You can see "In 2018, we read books" to review that coverage. We didn't want to repeat ourselves in 2019 or 2020. So when Marcia came up with a way to cover books but with a twist, we were all for it. Marcia's idea was for us to digital books -- we're largely a printed text crowd -- and to use AMAZON's KINDLE UNLIMITED. So for 2021, we'll be doing a book a week and trying to just use KINDLE UNLIMITED. Rebecca's "the mommie dearest diary: carol ann tells all" went up Saturday and we're speaking to her -- via instant messenger -- about this. First off, THE MOMMIE DEAREST DIARY: CAROL ANN TELLS ALL, how was it as a digital book.
Rebecca: Not really all that impressive and that's sadly true of a number of the digital books I've looked at on KINDLE UNLIMITED. Now this book may have had unimpressive photos in the text edition. But with the exception of one book, HOLLYWOOD PRIVATE LIVES UNCENSORED by Alan Royale, it's been one black and white photo after another. And Royale's book was all black and white photos until one color one of Marilyn Monroe in the section where he shares his belief that she was murdered. And in that book, and in others, there are photo captions that are out of order or photo captions for photos that aren't there at all.
Okay, and, explain how KINDLE UNLIMITED works.
Rebecca: I joined when Marcia came up with the idea so back then, last month, there was an offer where you got two months free to sample. I'm still under that. At the end of February or the start of March, I'll start paying something like $9.99 a month. KINDLE UNLIMITED is a service where, for the monthly fee, you can read books for 'free.' You just choose the book you want to read.
But you don't own it, right?
Rebecca: No. I believe if you tried to keep it in your cloud, your AMAZON CLOUD, like the books you bought, that an UNLIMITED book would vanish from the cloud when you stopped paying your monthly fee for UNLIMITED.
It's sort of like a library, isn't it? Where you pay a monthly fee to have access to a library of books?
Rebecca: That's exactly what it is. You won't find a lot 2020 books in the mix, so if your looking for new releases, forget KINDLE UNLIMITED.
Is it easy to find books?
Rebecca: Not really. They need to offer additional narrow categories. For example, I'd like something as narrow as taking their "biography" category and narrowing it down to just "movie stars" and "scientists" and "politicians" and categories like that.
Explain how you ended up with the book on the making of the film MOMMIE DEAREST.
Rebecca: I went with biographies and entertainment and then had something like 84 pages to go through -- most of which didn't have a single book that I -- or anyone else -- would want to read. I found some as I went along through all those pages and I would add it to my cloud and then keep looking. I found out that I could have ten in my cloud at one time. When I wanted another one after that, I'd have to release one from my cloud to get a new one in. So, let's call KINDLE UNLIMITED a library, you can check out ten books from the library at a time.
That's good to know. Part of the plan of doing this was to cover books but also to rate KINDLE UNLIMITED since it's a paid service. Anything else that you'd like to share.
Rebecca: I know, C.I., that you've read a ton of books in the last weeks sampling the service. Am I wrong on this, or there's no way for us to know -- online -- what books we've read?
Right, it just disappears from the cloud. And should you go back and see it again, it's not going to let you know that you've read it before.
Rebecca: So I'm keeping a written list myself so I'll know. But it would be helpful if they'd say, for example, "This book was previously in your cloud on" such and such date.
Good point. Thank you so much, Rebecca.
