Every book I've written is on Kindle Unlimited

Every book I've written is on Kindle Unlimited

Here's the short version: every novel I've published is now on Kindle Unlimited. One subscription, the whole catalog, read as much as you want.

Here's the longer version, because the short one sounds like marketing and the long one is the actual truth.

For about two years, the plan was to sell my books on Amazon and also host them on llitd.com. Subscribers could read full chapters on the site. Non-subscribers got a sample. The idea was that the site would feel like a clubhouse — the author's own corner of the internet, where the story kept going even after you'd finished the book.

I still love that idea. But every month I'd get an email from somebody who'd bounced off the pay-to-read flow on the site and gone to grab the ebook on Amazon instead. Every month I'd look at the Kindle Unlimited readers I could have had — the ones who already pay Amazon to read as much as they want — and think, "Why am I making this so hard?"

So I changed it.

"The trick is not minding that it hurts." — T.E. Lawrence

"You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute." — Tina Fey

"An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." — Montesquieu

What's actually true now

Every book in my backlist is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited through Amazon's KDP Select program. If you pay for KU, you can read any of them end to end at no extra cost. If you don't pay for KU, the individual ebooks are on Amazon at the prices they've always been, and Amazon runs a 30-day free trial for KU that most new readers never use.

That includes:

• World on Fire — Raven's Peak, Raven's Fall, Raven's Rise, and The Ninth Circle. Supernatural horror that starts in an abandoned Colorado mining town and ends somewhere a lot worse.
• World of Shadows — The Everett Exorcism, The Vatican Children, The Bishop's Legacy. A priest, a demon hunter, and a church with secrets nobody wants exposed.
• The Ashen Kingdoms — Blood and Belief, The Hollow Deep, Ashes and Thrones, Legacy of Iron, and The Eternal Vigil. Grimdark fantasy where the empires are the villains and the gods stopped answering a long time ago.
• Graveyard of Empires — military science fiction on a vast space station with the bones of a dozen dead civilizations inside.
• Horizons Wake — near-future technothrillers about the moment technology slips the leash.

And whenever a new book or series releases, it goes straight into Kindle Unlimited alongside everything else. The catalog grows; the deal stays the same.

All of it. One place. One subscription you probably already pay for.

Why I didn't do this sooner

Kindle Unlimited has a reputation problem with authors. People talk about it the way they talk about a side hustle that seems good but turns out to be a pyramid scheme. You hear about page-read rates that drop overnight. You hear about authors making less per book than they would selling on six platforms at once.

Some of that is true. Most of it is outdated. And for me, there was one specific reason I held back — the site.

KDP Select's rule is: if your ebook is in the program, that ebook can't be digitally distributed anywhere else during the enrollment window. Not on Kobo. Not on Apple Books. And — this is the grey-zone part — not as readable HTML on your own website, either. Authors argue about whether a gated chapter on a personal site technically counts. Amazon hasn't made a public ruling. But "I think it's probably fine" is a dumb place to bet a career.

So I had to pick. Either the site keeps hosting full chapters and half the catalog stays off Kindle Unlimited forever, or the site becomes something else and the whole catalog goes into KU.

I picked the catalog.

What changed on the site

If you've read full chapters on llitd.com before, here's what's different:

• The first chapter of every book is still free here. You can still sample before you buy. That's not changing.
• Everything past chapter 1 lives on Amazon. Buy the ebook, borrow it through KU, or grab the paperback — same as any other book you'd pick up.
• Subscribers keep the subscription. The paid tier is world-building archives, behind-the-scenes notes, early cover reveals, deleted scenes, character art, audio previews, and bonus short stories that live only on the site. Different value, not less value.
• Short stories stay free on the site. The bonus content I've been dripping out for years isn't going anywhere. Neither is the blog.

If you were a paid subscriber and any of that feels like a bait-and-switch, reply to any email from me and I'll sort it out personally. I'm not trying to pull a fast one. I'm trying to get every book I write in front of more readers, and the math on that only works if the books are somewhere readers already are.

What this means for you, practically

Let me translate this into the actual decisions you might be weighing.

If you already pay for Kindle Unlimited

You have access to every novel I've written. No per-book cost. Open the Kindle app, search "Lincoln Cole," and start anywhere. If you've been meaning to read World on Fire but didn't want to commit to find out if you like it — you don't have to anymore. Start with Raven's Peak. If you're still in after chapter three, you're in for all four books, and then some.

There's also a reader-friendly mechanic most people don't realize: borrows and reads count toward my ranking the same way sales do, and page reads pay me a royalty through KU's shared pool. Borrowing is not a charity move. It's just as good as buying, from my side of the spreadsheet. If you're on the fence about buying, borrow first, and if you love the book, tell somebody. That's the loop.

If you don't pay for Kindle Unlimited

Amazon runs a 30-day free trial that most people never touch. If you were curious about KU for any other reason, the trial costs you nothing, and my whole catalog is one of the things you can read during it. When the trial ends, you can cancel, keep a subscription, or go back to buying individual ebooks. No hard feelings either way.

If you'd rather just own the books, that also still works. Ebook prices haven't changed. Paperbacks are priced the same.

If you've never read my stuff

Start with the series that matches your mood:

First chapter is free on the site. Borrow the book on KU if chapter one hooks you. That's the whole deal now.

The part where I get honest about it

"The first draft of anything is garbage." — Ernest Hemingway (paraphrased, because Hemingway swore)

I'm not going to pretend this is a pure upgrade for everyone. It isn't. Some readers preferred reading chapters in a browser on their laptop at work. Some readers liked the way the site held the story — the little asides, the lore drops between chapters, the fact that the book felt like a place. Those readers lost something. I'm sorry about that part. I traded it for something, but I didn't trade it for nothing.

What I traded for is reach. Kindle Unlimited has millions of active subscribers — an order of magnitude more readers than I have any plausible chance of reaching through my own site traffic. The books that were already on KU routinely get more page reads in a month than the subscription site has had total visits. It's not close.

And honestly — the site is better now that it isn't trying to be an ebook reader. The chapter template was fighting the theme the whole time. The subscription tier was muddy because it was half "read the book" and half "get extras." Splitting those cleanly means the site can do the thing it's actually good at, which is feel like a place you want to hang out. Not a paywall.

What I'm doing here instead

• World-building posts. Deep lore. Maps. Timelines. Why the Progenitors did what they did. Why Raven's Peak specifically.
• Process posts. What it's like writing a multi-book fantasy series when you started out writing supernatural horror. What I learned editing six books in a row. Why I burned an entire draft of Legacy of Iron and started over.
• Character sheets and concept art. Character portraits, location art, weapon and armor references — the stuff that usually stays in my Scrivener folder.
• Bonus short stories. Always free. Sometimes linked to the books, sometimes their own thing.
• Early cover reveals and ARCs. Before Amazon, before the mailing list, here first.

The best author websites I visit are the ones where the author clearly enjoys being there. The site is closer to that version of itself now that it isn't also trying to be a bookstore.

The ask

"You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." — Jodi Picoult

Here's what would actually help.

If you've read any of my books and haven't left a review, this would be a great time to change that. Reviews are the single biggest lever I have on Amazon's algorithm. Not my lever — theirs. The algorithm decides whether a new reader sees Raven's Peak when they search "supernatural horror" or whether they see some author with a bigger review count who's been paying Amazon Ads for years. A two-line review helps more than you'd think. Stars with three words underneath still moves the needle.

If you're a KU subscriber, borrow one book you haven't read and start it. Don't even finish it. Just open chapter one and let Amazon register that the borrow happened. Early borrows matter more than late ones, because they're what Amazon uses to decide how to surface the book to other subscribers.

If you've got a friend who reads the genre, send them one specific recommendation. "You'd like Raven's Peak" is a better ask than "Check out my friend's books." Specific beats general every time.

If you want to stay looped in, the newsletter is the main way I'll reach out. Free tier gets everything I publish on the blog. Paid tier gets the extras listed above, and I'm adding to that list every month.

And if you're a long-time reader who's been here since the early days — the old blog, the first short stories, the days before any of this was a catalog — thank you. This wouldn't be possible without you. I mean that.

Get out there and read something!

Whether that's one of mine or not is honestly up to you. But if you've been sitting on a Kindle Unlimited subscription you barely use, or a free trial you never claimed, or a TBR list that hasn't moved in six months — now's a good time to dig in.

I'm going back to the book I'm writing. The next one is weird. I think you'll like it.

— Lincoln