In an absolutely devastating announcement (right before the holidays) Amazon has informed us that they are ending their Kindle Subscription program in Sept. 2023 and trying to get magazines to switch to Kindle Unlimited. Asking for more details, but this is bad. Magazine subscriptions are guaranteed revenue from each subscriber. KU is not like that. It will effectively cancel thousands of subscriptions since there's no migration path.
It's hard to even say how much we'd get from a single subscriber. This completely removes our ability to control our price if we want to be in the dominant ebook ecosystem.
I've scheduled an appointment to talk with Amazon later this afternoon. Have many questions. Fellow editors of mags on Amazon: feel free to DM/email me. We should be talking.
@clarkesworld Sorry to hear this. As a happy Kindle subscriber and someone who has enjoyed the magazine for years, this sounds like a disaster for publishers.
@martinmcgrath It's going to be a VERY messy transition. It's basically like hitting cancel and restart on one of our largest subscription options. We're fortunate enough to have alternatives, but this will make '23 and '24 difficult.