Amazon Prepares E-Book Subscription Service

Amazon.com AMZN +0.44% appears to be preparing a subscription e-book service offering unlimited access to 600,000 titles, according to details the Web retailer briefly posted to its website.

The service, reported earlier by GigaOm, would be called Kindle Unlimited and allow customers to download select e-books for $9.99 per month. Kindle Unlimited would compete with startups like Oyster and Scribd, which offer 500,000 and 400,000 e-books, respectively, for $8.99 or $9.95 a month.

Among the titles seen on the Kindle Unlimited page were former bestsellers like “Life of Pi,” “Water for Elephants” and “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.” The page is no longer visible. An Amazon spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Subscription e-books services have struggled to draw the newest releases from publishers, who are reluctant to forgo e-book and physical-copy sales that tend to be more profitable.

Amazon has been aggressively launching new services and products this year, including unlimited streaming music and devices like the Fire TV set-top box and Fire smartphone, due out later this month.

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