I’ve subscribed to Kindle Unlimited for about five years, but only in the past month have I discovered the variety of magazines in the ‘newsstand’ section. I think it was because I was so focused on reading novels that I didn’t bother to look at the other categories.
Magazine subscriptions are definitely making my KU subscription worth the money. The ones pictured above – Fate and Fortune and Crime – are giving me a wealth of ideas to incorporate into my ghost horror research. Can you believe that as a horror aficionado, I hadn’t heard of scrying, for example. I will certainly be looking into it in more detail over the coming months as I plan to incorporate such a method into my ghost horror draft, novel WIP#7.
Aside from novel research, having magazine subscriptions on my phone has been handy for travelling this summer. With a short attention span while keeping one eye on the little adventurer, especially poolside, reading a novel on my Kindle hasn’t always been practical. Articles are handy, being quick and convenient to read. National Geographic, the History magazine and several newspapers are also available if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, so I’ve been keeping myself entertained.
What do you think? If you’re an author, do you find magazines useful for novel research? Do you have a KU subscription and if so, do you subscribe to any good magazines on there for writing ideas?
Leilanie Stewart 
I gave up my KU subscription when it ended in June. I have so many great books on the Kindle app on my phone, and I wasn’t reading them because I was always reading something from KU. Plus we took out a Prime subscription early this year, and there’s a library on there as well as a Prime First Read at the start of each month. I’m making it my mission to read and review all the books stored on my phone (ones I bought because they were on special price and I couldn’t pass them up, or free copies of classics, and some of the First Reads. I may go back to KU in the future, but I’ll have to see. I’m not big on readin magazines, and I can’t say that anything I read on KU contributed to my writing research. We’re all different though, so good luck with your own KU research. 🙂
Definitely valid reasons for ending your subscription. Overall, I guess I spend more time reading KU than the ones I’ve bought, though I’m trying to balance that out this summer and hopefully meet my reading goals too. I’m a sucker for finding writing tidbits in odd places though, so the magazine subscriptions have been a surprise gem. 😂
I should have given the magazines a look, although in general they were what I read in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms – until I got the Kindle app for my phone, lol. I may return to KU, I just have to get the 100+ books that I have on my Kindle read first! And what I’m not spending on KU – and they put the price up before I left – I can spend on more books! 🙂