Saturday, December 29, 2012

Alternative to Amazon Prime?

Please read before answering.

For the life of me I cannot find any other monthly or yearly membership sites for Kindle compatible books. We bought my mother an e-ink Kindle for Christmas. Amazon's $80/yr Prime membership only offers one "free" rental a month. That breaks down to $6.67 per book once a month and a good $5-$10 per book on the rest of Amazon's catalog. Did I mention she tears through two to three books a week? That's a hell of a lot of money for the mere convenience of a reader. She doesn't stream videos and she doesn't shop much online, so none of the other benefits of an Amazon membership really apply to her.

Does anyone know of a good alternative that won't cost her hundreds of extra dollars a year? I hear that the selection of ebooks at the library is sad compared to the selection she's used to in paperbacks etc., and she's already read most of the classics she cares to read, so the free collections of 1001 public domain books won't do her much good either. I'm not about to get her mixed up in illegal downloading. She wouldn't know how to navigate or protect herself in the torrent world anyway. Google can't help as too many people have typed in the words "free ebooks" and "Amazon Prime vs. Netflix", rendering search results useless. Any ideas?
>>> Alternative to Amazon Prime?