Kindle FAQs

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Laura, from the feature I am talking to you as I edit this episode. So little bit about this episode that I have. It's actually a original must report is a live episode for Nobel night, which is every Thursday nights. I joined my friends, Victoria and Francesca, and we have a live show. On YouTube and Facebook, where we each had about book recommendations, tips, and tricks, and how to be, a more effective reader and everything else in between. So in this episode, we're talking about the difference between Kindle. Kindle unlimited and all this different terminologies.

So if you're new to being the reader or your thinking, or like, what is the difference between a Kindle book and a Kindle unlimited and everything in between this episode? I answered those frequently asked questions. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll talk to you later.

Laura/Victoria: Welcome back to Novel Nights, our weekly live show. We're really excited because we're talking all things Kindle. Kindle today, Kindle Unlimited. So if you have a Kindle, if you've been thinking about getting a Kindle, hello, Black Friday, Christmas, [00:01:00] holidays, put in your requests.

Laura/Victoria: But if you're an avid kindle reader, we have some exciting recommendations for you all. . Like we said at the top, we're here to chat Kindle today. And if you've watched any video with me ever, I've always said Laura is my Okay. Anytime I have any questions about Kindle from, actually, let me start from the beginning.

Laura/Victoria: She influenced me to buy a Kindle, right? The actual Kindle I own, which Yep, the actual Kindle that I own is courtesy of Laura. Okay. So Laura is the reason I have a Kindle. Laura influences me. If a Kindle tells me how to use a Kindle, just everything, what to do. She even gave me my first couple of Kindle recommendations.

Laura/Victoria: So yeah, that's what today's episode is all about, but I really want to throw it to her so she can just, do a Kindle introduction just in case. You like me when new once upon a time. . So Laura, take the [00:02:00] wheel. All right. So first things first, you got to talk about what's the difference between a Kindle limited, Oboeiba, Nook, and everything else.

Laura/Victoria: Yeah. It's mostly e readers. So around 2010, , Amazon introduced e readers where you get a paper and get a. Like a pdf form. It's called an epub right now. And basically you can read the book, essentially the same thing. It costs, it's supposed to be cheaper, but really costs the same price as like paying for the book itself.

Laura/Victoria: So if you're reading in the U. S., you're likely to know about Kindle, which is the Kindle app. They're just all bookstore. You can buy it on Amazon. There are other systems like Kobo, which are mainly international. Library send ebooks to Kobo is in the US is through Kindle, but the Kindle, you can use a, you can use an actual e reader like Victoria has, you can show your kid, your e reader, or you can actually use the app.

Laura/Victoria: So the app works in tablets, like [00:03:00] iPad. Samsung Android tablets, you can read on your phone, you can read on the web, just in a web version of it, or you can read it on your Peloton. They actually added the Kindle reader. You can read while riding your bike. So essentially you're just like reading books, as it does.

Laura/Victoria: You can buy books, you can also get them for your library, as I mentioned in the U. S. Other countries, it might be other process might be COBO and whatnot. And essentially you just read books online. It's the same way as reading, reading like a physical book. It's just, or like, it's just the same idea.

Laura/Victoria: The information is the same. Nothing changes. It's just the way if it's if you're actually one of those people who like to have bigger font I actually enjoy the e reader better because I can actually increase the font size As opposed to in a book you cannot increase the font size If you have struggle with I know a lot of people says like I've been a screen all day It's like what should I do?

Laura/Victoria: Can't let you reader? I would say a paperwhite or an e reader, e ink is different because it does not have blue light. It's essentially [00:04:00] like reading a paper and it works well. It doesn't have glare. You can take it to the beach. It doesn't have any issues. Most of them are waterproof.

Laura/Victoria: So there's different models that you can get. You can start with the basic model and it works perfectly fine. I would also recommend if you're going to buy e reader to just don't bother buying the most amount of memory, a lot of times, like I need to have 32 gigabyte and like, you really don't, you can go, you can be fine with eight.

Laura/Victoria: In my e reader about 5, 000 books and I'm still with eight and I still have memories. So that tells you something. Don't, you don't need to buy a lot of memories because a lot of it's, you don't need to use it. . I personally use the iPad.

Laura/Victoria: I've been a Kindle EE and creator for a long time, but I found the iPad to be much better for me. So there's different ways you can read them, but you can read them on the go. Why I like about Kindle, it's because when I was in 2016, I was in a weird job situation. I was like, I [00:05:00] had really a lot of bored, like a lot of free time.

Laura/Victoria: And so I discovered that I can actually just download books, like read a book on my phone, finish the book and go to Amazon and download the next book and the next book and the next book. And so somehow that year I ended up reading like 300 books, kid you not, because I was just able to just. Consume them right away and I can consume them at any point where it was in line.

Laura/Victoria: I can just pick up the book and read the book. I can go like, go down the street and like, Hey, I have like waiting in the doctor's office. I can just like pick the book there. It does nothing to carry on. You can find the book on your phone. You can get your iPad, you can have your e reader and it's just like you're ready.

Laura/Victoria: Where do you place your read on the go? So I have a question. So for folks out there, let's kind of do a mini recap. So you have Kindle. So Kindle Unlimited. You can do it on your phone. If you want to, you can do it on an e reader. If you want to just download the app, a tablet [00:06:00] and your big computer, you can sign up for Kindle Unlimited and read from Kindle Unlimited.

Laura/Victoria: This is separate. So Kindle is Kindle and Unlimited is different. So Kindle is any ebook, any book that you can actually. Show up on you buy on Amazon, you see on paper copy or hard copy? . Chances are there's an ebook version of it that you can purchase. You can purchase a book at any time. There's also, the libraries actually has an apple lib where you can borrow the.

Laura/Victoria: The ebook from the lab from the library and they send it over to a Kindle. So it's like instant gratification. That was one of the things I don't have to wait for shipping. I don't have to wait for a mailbox and get book mail. I can just get my book like two minutes. I'm like, I kind of want to have this book right now.

Laura/Victoria: And I just get it like right away. If there's a book, it's out of stock. It's not really out of stock in the Kindle. Because it's a download. So what's the difference with Kindle limited is that it's. [00:07:00] Amazon's lending library. So it's a little bit different than Kindle book. A Kindle book is any book you can buy in its e reader.

Laura/Victoria: At Kindle Limited, essentially, it's Amazon's library. So you pay a fee for 11. 99 or you can get it cheaper in different ways. If you buy a new Kindle, you get a free Kindle Limited subscription for a couple months. Or you can actually buy annual subscription. The price has decreased. It used to be a really good deal.

Laura/Victoria: Now it's no longer like a good deal, but you can find ways to get Kindle Limited. But essentially what you do, you pay a fee, essentially like Netflix, and you can borrow up to 20 books at a time. Some popular books are included, like fourth wing, Red White and Royal Blue, like a lot of popular books are out there, are available, Kindle Unlimited where you can borrow them so you don't have to pay for them.

Laura/Victoria: And you can borrow them. You can read them if the pro, if the book leaves the program, but you still have borrow them, the book still stays in your library until you return it. So it's a really easy way to try [00:08:00] out different authors, , different genres, different places. Freida McFadden. All her books are on Kindle limited.

Laura/Victoria: So, if you want to, you can not borrow them from the library. They're only exclusive on Kindle limited. So you can borrow the book. You can read the book, you can do all the stuff, author gets paid, but you don't have to pay for it. You just pay the membership fee. Gotcha. So Kindle is, so when people say Kindle, It's a way you can read material that's online.

Laura/Victoria: Okay, cool. In an electronic format, I should say. So electronic format, you can read it on the Kindle. Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's whole lending program, their whole catalog, where you pay a subscription fee and you can read books once they're in their catalog. So then you have the readers. So the e readers like the one I purchased.

Laura/Victoria: This is just a method, so you don't need this in order to read Kindle or Kindle [00:09:00] Unlimited, right? Yeah, you can, as long as you have the Kindle app on your phone, you can read Kindle books. If you have an iPad, you can read Kindle books. If you have a Peloton, you can read Kindle books. If you have a phone, you can read Kindle books.

Laura/Victoria: Computer. You can read kind of books. There's a way to access those books. It's just basically, you just log into your Kindle app and your library is always there. You won't have missing books. You're like, Oh, I don't know. I bought this book 20 years ago. I forgot about it. If you have a new Kindle, it's there.

Laura/Victoria: It will tell you if you read the book and you're like, wait, I thought I read this book and you'll be like, Oh, it's actually read. I read it this year. So all your books are stored there. It's a great place. pretty easy way. You can save highlights. You can highlight things. You can look for, if you don't understand this word, like what does the word mean?

Laura/Victoria: You can actually click on the word and it'll give it to the dictionary. It will tell you like the description. It'll tell you what other people are working. So it's a way to really read and to have your library. Essentially my Kindle holds 5, 000 books [00:10:00] that I don't have. Space for that library.

Laura/Victoria: Yeah, I agree. Because it's so funny when you were saying, oh, I think I have that book. Where is that book? Like there is a book, I'm literally Hing down right now. . I know it's somewhere. It's in a box, it's in a pile. But yeah, you're absolutely right. You can always just go straight here. You can find it, you know if you have it.

Laura/Victoria: And I do like it. I also like the convenience of, just throwing this in my bag sometimes and just being able to read on the go without, lugging a whole bunch of books. So for someone who is curious about Kindle and reading specifically on Kindle Unlimited, What are some things you think they should know?

Laura/Victoria: So don't get overwhelmed by all the options. There's the one thing makes you tell you there's the world is your oyster. And there's so many options. There's a little bit of everything. So if you're getting started, I'll just start out with like, maybe some of the recommendations you may have seen on social media, like chances are, A lot of [00:11:00] recommendations.

Laura/Victoria: A lot of creators and people who are starting out on this reading journey, they start with Kindle Limited because it's a low cost barrier. You only pay 12. You can try as many books as you want. No one's telling you not. And you can just DNF those books. You're like, Hey, I didn't like this book.

Laura/Victoria: Or yes, I love this book. And then I go back to the rest of the series. So it's a great place to get started for you to not feel like, if I didn't like it, I didn't lose the money after spending 30 buying a hardcover. And I realized like, Oh, this book is not for me. One thing you can do, which I've been doing is you can send samples of the book.

Laura/Victoria: , I'll send you the first 10 percent of the books. You can read the little bit and understand like, Hey, is this book for me? Is it writing works for me? Is it's like, does it feel good? Does it hook me? That I want to borrow the whole book. You can send a sample and that's a great way to get started.

Laura/Victoria: You're like, Hey, this sounds good, but let me just give it a little bit of more to try. Essentially. If you are in a bookstore and you're like, you're scrolling through the books and you're like, let me just sit down and read a little few of our pages. Same idea, [00:12:00] same vibe, not having to pay for it. Do that.

Laura/Victoria: Give yourself a chance. Try the book. If you like it, then you can just have the option to get the rest of the book. If you don't, you can just. It's totally fine. And for kindle limited, I would say start out with like some of the recommendations. I think there's a reason why they're trying to recommendations.

Laura/Victoria: Another place you want to look at is a top 100 on the Amazon. Actually, Amazon has like the best sellers and usually tells you like, here's what people are looking for. Here's what we were writing. And most of the best sellers are kindle limited titles for a reason because it's Amazon lending library. So it just gives you another step.

Laura/Victoria: If you're looking for genre recommendations, I have to say Freida McFadden is a top 100 for a reason. It's really, it's unputdownable, like they're fun, they're twisty, they're plod, they're not so gory they're thinking psychological thrillers, and I think those are really good ways to go. And there's enough in the backlist you can binge read a bunch [00:13:00] of them and you're like enjoying the process.

Laura/Victoria: I've told, and this is a try and true not for romance readers, For other, for general readers, I would say Freida McFadden is like, you're trying to true person. You can just like, get started, connect. And then there's a whole world of unpredictable thrillers out there. Like you can just like borrow them and there's like options for read and listen because Amazon actually has their own imprint.

Laura/Victoria: And one of the things they do is they publish books on Kindle limited. But they also publish the audio book for free that you can borrow the audio book. So you can do both. You can do tangents. You're reading my mind because I was actually going to say, you told me this really cool thing where you can listen and read.

Laura/Victoria: And ever since then, my mind has been blown. Yes. So one of the things if you do not the Kindle paper wide, but the e reader, the app, if you do the app and you put the audio book and the book, you can do the both things like the audio book. The narrator is going to narrate you and it's going to like [00:14:00] talk to you about that.

Laura/Victoria: It's you're going to see the words. Another option that Kindle does, not Kindle limited, that Kindle does is, and I know Francesca has shared this, is screen to text reader. So this is not an Outlook narrator, this is like, this is AI basically telling you like, like a reader, telling you the text reader. So screen to text reader, there's an option for that.

Laura/Victoria: So if you have this idea, like, you know what? I need to listen to it at the same time, or I don't have time. I just want to listen to a little bit of pages. That option is available for accessibility purpose. Yeah, I think that's super, super cool. Again, that was like a mind blown moment. Now, again, like I said at the top, Laura influenced me, which is part of the reason why I have my eReader.

Laura/Victoria: I love it. Just because I am that person who's working on a computer all day. So I want something with no glare. It has low light. I sleep, it doesn't wake up my husband. It just, it works for [00:15:00] me and my life. Now, when I purchased this, I purchased it on a special and she also told me, oh, don't do this. Do that and then you'll get this discount and so on.

Laura/Victoria: When I tell you she really is my Kindle Guru she is. So let's say there's someone who's been wanting to get an E-reader for some time. I know you told them. Don't get obsessed with memory. Because you have thousands of books and your memory's good, but the holiday seasons are coming up. Maybe someone can write a little note and leave somewhere and someone will gift them a e reader.

Laura/Victoria: If it's something they so desire, what is something they should look forward to? What is a good time of year in terms of they want to dip their toes into Kindle Unlimited? What are some kind of things of people who are really new and want to get started? What should they look forward to? Thank you.

Laura/Victoria: So there this year, we haven't had that many good discounts. So like, if you're looking for discounts, like we haven't had that many , we're due for a new model since we're, I know the Oasis, which had the buttons actually was discontinued. So there might be getting a model, [00:16:00] but it's.

Laura/Victoria: There's some rambling around it. If you're looking for a Kindle, there's a couple ways. If you want to save some money, you just like, I just want to start it and I don't want to pay full price. Look at Unclaimed Bagagged and some of the second hand stores where you can get like electronic secondhand and you can just give it refurbished, Kindle e reader. If you're looking for a model that's actually worth the time, I like the paperweight because it's a little bit larger. It's comfortable, it's not heavy. You can just get like a nice little cover. You can get a pop socket. You can put stickers. You can decorate. You can get a skin.

Laura/Victoria: You can do like, you can have it like your way. But the Kindle paperweight, I like it better because I like I, I'm getting older, so I need bigger screen, but if you want a smaller screen, you want to like a portable that can fill it, can fit your Lululemon belt bag, then the basic is the one that could fit for that.

Laura/Victoria: It's a six inch, the other one is 6. 8 inches. If you're nearby the Kindle, you want to make sure that it gives you the three month deal. [00:17:00] So the three month KU deal, there's, they don't make it that obvious, but there's one that it gives you a three month preview deal, and that saves you 35.

Laura/Victoria: So you might as well just Take Jeff Bezos for 35 and borrow as many books as you want. So that could make sure you have the three month pay your deal. If you have an older Kindle, like an older model, you can trade that older model. And they'll give you a 20 percent discount. And you're likely, depending on the model, you can get 30 gift card.

Laura/Victoria: Or 5 gift card. So that's like, that's a savings that you're making. So you can do that if you have any, it doesn't matter. You just have to have an older model. You let them know I have an older model. Can you just give me the discount? And so that way you save some money, like try not to pay full price. It's not worth it.

Laura/Victoria: It's Amazon. Like let's just save some money where we can. I am team. I never like to pay full price for everything. I am always the person in the store. So sorry, sales people, if you're out there in sales, I am [00:18:00] sorry, but I'm that person who just has to ask like, is there any sales, any discounts, any promos?

Laura/Victoria: What can you do for me? Well, I hope some of these tips that Laura has shared are helpful to you. Again, I got mine on a deal. I got The discounted membership and all the bells and whistles because I paid attention. So needless to say, you all need to follow Laura on Substack because she is sharing the things.

Laura/Victoria: Join her email list. She is my Kindle guru, anything Kindle, sales, special stuff, your Kindle day, AirBuds day, all the things. Just follow her. Okay. Yes. Cause she'll give you all the things. So folks, if you use Kindle, let us know in the comments. We want to hear from you. If you like Kindle Unlimited, we'd love to hear from you.

Laura/Victoria: Do you have one of the e readers you read on your phone? How do you read eBooks? Do you even read eBooks? What are their situation? We want to hear from you. So let us know in the comments,