Amazon has renamed Kindle Unlimited, and the change goes beyond adding a plus sign. The subscription is now called Kindle+. It stays at $11.99 a month in the US, and it adds thousands of audiobooks to the catalog, including titles narrated by AI.
You still get ebooks, comics, manga, and magazines, and thousands of ebooks now come with companion audio.
What’s new in the Kindle+ subscription?
The core reading experience stays the same. You can borrow up to 20 digital books, audiobooks, or comics at a time. There are no due dates, so you can return titles whenever you like and borrow replacements.
Kindle+ still has no connection to Amazon Prime, so you buy it separately. You can read or listen on a Kindle device, or use the free Kindle app on a phone, tablet, computer, or the web.
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The biggest change is Virtual Voice, Amazon’s AI narration tool. It lets Kindle Direct Publishing authors create audiobooks without hiring a human narrator, and it costs them nothing to use.
New titles enrolled in KDP Select become eligible for Virtual Voice narration automatically. Authors can also add AI narration to books they have already published. According to ZDNet, some of these AI-narrated titles are now part of the expanded Kindle+ catalog.
If you prefer human narrators, Amazon is also adding audiobooks made through Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX). US subscribers get them first.
Why does this matter?
For authors, Virtual Voice offers a free way to reach more readers without the cost and effort of hiring a narrator. For you as a subscriber, it means a lot more audiobook variety inside the same subscription at the same price.
If AI narration is not for you, you still have options. Audible and library apps like Libby offer fully human-narrated and dramatized audiobooks, so you do not have to listen to synthetic voices if you prefer the traditional approach.
