Amazon’s Latest Prime Perk Is Great for Readers
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A close-up of a man using a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in a cafe setting on January 14, 2013.
Amazon on Wednesday rolled out a new perk for Amazon Prime members:Prime Reading, a revolving selection of books, magazines and more free to those who pay Prime’s$99 annual fee.
Of the books Amazon iscurrently touting as part of the collection, the title that immediately jumped out at me isHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,which is $8.99 for theKindle version sans a Prime account. Over in the non-fiction section, there’s a range of Lonely Planet travel guides, which could be handy assuming you’re planning a trip to one of the destinations on offer at any given time. As for magazines, there’sGQ,National Geographic Traveler, and, full disclosure, a handful of Time Inc. publications includingSports Illustrated andEntertainment Weekly. (Time Inc. is TIME’s parent company.)
Is it worth getting Prime forPrime Reading alone? Probably not — there doesn’t seem to be enough here quite yet. But it’s a nice addition to thePrime package, which most notably includes free two-day shipping but also anever-increasing raft of other benefits, like free photo storage and access to Amazon’s streaming movie and TV libraries.