How Do Kindle Unlimited Subscribers Behave In 2023 (And How Does it Impact Authors)?

Kindle Unlimited has revolutionized the eBook experience for both readers and authors. In this post we take a closer look at the habits of KU readers compared to non-KU readers, and what that means for authors whose titles are enrolled in KU. We surveyed over 3,000 readers and analyzed the results to find out what the takeaways are for the author community.

1. How does Kindle Unlimited work for the subscriber?

To start with the basics: Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service that allows readers to read the books available as part of the Kindle Unlimited library for “free” (think Netflix for books). The service currently costs $11.99/ month, and there are over 4 million titles available to enjoy. Most of the books available are either classics or titles published through Amazon imprints and Kindle Direct Publishing.

KU readers can read as many books as they want per month. The one limitation is that readers can only have 20 Kindle Unlimited books downloaded to their devices at a time. This means that readers can’t “hoard” books the way that they may normally feel inclined to. When a subscriber is in the Kindle Store, whether it’s in the Amazon app, the Kindle app, or the Amazon website, they can see clearly which titles are available as part of their subscription.

2. How many Kindle Unlimited Subscribers are there?

Amazon has never publicized the total number of subscribers in KU. However, we do have some information about the KU program, and we can use our available data to estimate the total number of KU subscribers. Our post on on Kindle Unlimited Royalties has data points for the KDP Global Fund and the KENP payout rate. When you divide the global fund by the KENP payout, you get the total number of pages read in KU for a given month.

For this exercise let’s use the data from July 2023. The Fund was $49.5 million and the payout per KENP was about $0.004

KDP Global Fund / KENP Payout = Total number of Pages read in the month on KU

49,500,000 / 0.004 = 12,375,000,000

That’s over 12 billion pages read! If we assume the average novel is 300 pages, we can back into the number of novels read: 12,375,000,000 divided by 300 gives you 41,250,000 average length novels read through KU subscriptions per month.

Based on our survey data, KU subscribers read roughly 9 books per month. We can use this data to estimate a subscriber count for KU.

Number of KU Novels Read / Number of Novels read by one Subscriber = Total Number of Subscribers

 41,250,000/ 9 = 4,583,333 KU subscribers

4.5 million readers in KU is a lot of readers, and because our calculations are based on pages read it’s likely that the 4.5 Million number represents the active readers enrolled in KU. We would guess there are even more inactive users who are subscribed but are not reading.

There are limitations with our data, and we’re making quite a few educated assumptions, but we think it’s safe to assume that there at least 4 million readers in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited.

3. How many books does a KU subscriber read?

When we asked KU readers how many titles they read per month, one thing became apparent very quickly: Kindle Unlimited is filled of avid readers.

Over 73% of KU subscribers read more than five books per month. Compare that to non-KU readers, where only 52% of readers read more than five books per month.

This makes sense. Kindle Unlimited subscribers pay $11.99 per month for the service, so there is an incentive to get their money’s worth. Also, people who read a lot of books will get the most value from KU as they were likely spending more than $11.99 per month purchasing books. Over 19% of our KU subscriber sample said they read more than 20 books per month!

4. Do Kindle Unlimited Subscribers review titles, and when they do, do they count as verified?

When we asked our readers how often they reviewed the books they read, KU subscribers were more likely to leave a review than non-KU readers. 27% of KU subscribers review books somewhat often or very often, compared to Non-KU readers who review very often or somewhat often only 21% of the time.

Reviews left by Kindle Unlimited subscribers do not show as verified reviews on Amazon. However, even if KU readers’ reviews don’t have the “verified” sticker on them, they still count toward your total review count and rank, so they are beneficial.

 

5. Do Kindle Unlimited Subscribers purchase books outside of the KU Library?

Yes! 63% of KU subscribers surveyed say that they “somewhat often” or “very often” purchase books not enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Only 6% of KU surveyed said they “never” buy books not enrolled in KU.

This means that if an author has a reader following in KU, then chooses to remove their books from KU, they are not alienating their KU readers. There is a high chance that those readers will continue to read and pay for their books.

6. What genres do Kindle Unlimited subscribers read?

We noticed that the genre popularity with KU readers mirrors the genre popularity amongst readers at large, with two notable exceptions.

First: Romance, Fantasy, and Mystery are the most popular genres for both KU and Non-KU readers. However, we noticed a heavier emphasis on Romance within the KU Readers, with 35% of KU readers citing Romance as their primary genre compared to 25% of Non-KU readers. This makes sense to us, as Romance readers are generally avid readers who consume multiple books per week, so KU makes sense for them. Romance authors who do not have a book enrolled in KU may want to consider it, since over a third of KU readers enjoy Romance. Having a title available through KU is a targeted way to get in front of a group of readers who are predisposed to like Romance.

Second: We also noticed that Non-KU readers read more Horror, Children’s, and Young Adult books than KU subscribers. Children’s and Young Adult makes sense, not every parent will be paying for a subscription for their children.

On Horror, we can only speculate. It could just be our sample, but it could also be that horror readers prefer bigger name authors like Stephen King who aren’t available in Kindle Unlimited.

7. Which type of Devices do Kindle Unlimited Subscribers read on?

Before we get into the differences between KU readers and Non-KU readers devices, let’s talk about the overall picture of reading preferences that came out of the survey. We were surprised to find that over 48% of surveyed readers are reading on a phone or a tablet! This is important because modern phones and tablets all have a full internet browser and color screens. For authors, this is an extremely important finding for a few reasons.

1. ‘Back matter’ or ‘front matter’ links will work very well on those devices because they have full browsers built in.

   That means adding a join the mailing list link in your book will allow the user to tap on it directly and join your list easily. With older Kindle devices, the ‘experimental browser’ is fairly limited and not reliable enough to collect emails well. The era of reader interactivity is upon us.

2. It places additional weight on cover design.

   Now that the shopping experience will be mostly presented in color it’s even more important to have a high quality cover.

3. It opens the door for certain image-heavy genres.

   This is really great for any genre that relies on imagery, for example: cookbooks, graphic novels, and children’s books. It may also allow for genres that were traditionally text-centric to make more use of color photos or audio snippets. Perhaps Fantasy authors with elaborate fictional worlds could offer pronunciation guides or colored maps. We’re excited to see how authors push the boundaries of multimedia now that the reading technology can support it.

Alright, but back to Kindle Unlimited. Do KU Readers have different device preferences? They do. KU readers are more likely to have a Kindle-branded tablet vs. the Kindle app on a tablet or phone.

8. How many titles on the top charts are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited?

On the day that we checked (9/14/23), 64% of the best selling titles on the Amazon paid charts were enrolled in KU. With 89% of the romances, and 73% of the Mystery/Thriller titles being available through KU.

On the free charts, it’s a slightly different story. Only 49% of the top 100 books are in KU. We believe that the difference between KU percentages on the free and paid charts are due to Amazon’s KDP rules. When your book is in KU, your ability to price the book at free is limited to five days per quarter, which limits the an author’s ability to leverage free days as a marketing tactic. With KU authors having fewer free days, and some opting to use Kindle Countdown deals instead, there are just fewer free books in KU.

Only 30% of romances on the free charts were enrolled in KU. This matches with what we know about the genre preferences of KU subscribers. Many of them read romance, and romance readers typically read more books per month than readers of other genres (this is likely due to a combination of voracious reading appetites and book lengths).

Genre	PAID CHARTS % of the Top 100 Books that are in KU	FREE CHARTS % of the Top 100 Books that are in KU
All Genres	64%	49%
Romance	89%	30%
Fantasy	73%	35%
Mystery / Thriller	73%	36%

Since we pulled this data on a specific day these percentages are likely to jump around a bit and this is not a rigorous statistical analysis.

9. Key Takeaways for Authors About Kindle Unlimited

There are a few main takeaways from all of the graphs above that we want to leave you with:

• The KDP fund just keeps growing. Month over month the KDP fund gets bigger, which means that plenty of readers are actively reading the enrolled titles. If you can sell your book to this audience, then you’ll get a portion of that pot.
• Romance authors may benefit greatly from KU. It’s hard to argue with the fact that 89% romance books on the bestseller charts were enrolled in KU. Romance readers are avid, and will gladly read through enough books in a month to make the $11.99 subscription fee worth it.
• KU readers are incredibly active. KU readers read more books and review books at a higher rate. It’s safe to assume they are more active generally than their Non-KU counterparts.
• You can use KU enrollment strategically. There is an opportunity to use KU enrollment as a strategy to acquire readers who then purchase your other books. If 63% of KU subscribers go on to purchase books outside of the program, then one reader acquisition strategy is to put some titles in KU, allowing those readers to read them for “free”, and then converting those readers into paying customers on your other titles.

Are your titles in KU? What has your experience been? We know that authors have to consider the pros and cons of KDP Select when deciding whether to enroll. Let us know your story in the comments!

A Note on Methodology

The following conclusions are based off of self-reported survey results from our reader base. We did no heavy statistical analysis on the data, but rather took the raw data, cleaned it up, and made some logical inferences from what we saw. If you are a crazy market research pro, or a stats geek, please try not to hyperventilate.

*This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated with 2023 data and analysis.*