Oyster, Netflix for books, is launching the beta version of its iPhone app
pandodaily.com
pandodaily.com
Based on: http://gawker.com/5971571/are-you-an-above+average-book-read...
I read about the average (outlier) person, so for $9.95 I'd rather own the one or two books I can read that month, which would cost close (give or take) to the same amount as they're offering.
reading is an active activity unlike tv or music which are inherently passive. IMO that makes a big difference in how much we can consume the medium.
However, Amazon offers samples of eBooks (most of them I believe) and they offer that service for free.
So while $9.95 is slightly cheaper, it just doesn't seem worth it to me. I'd rather pay more and keep adding to my book collection.
I first pointed out libraries and then made exactly your point about consumption. People burn through TV show episodes or movies more than they do books. And on top of that, I'd say a broader set of the population watch TV/movies than read books, which makes for a smaller market.
I am currently part-way through 6-8 books. I haven't managed to finish one in about 12 months!
Though admittedly that doesn't cover the library counter point.
I quite like owning my books, actually. There's already an alternative to doing so, called a library; since the book sales business did quite well int he pre-internet days despite the widespread availability of libraries, I'm not sure why the author thinks a functioning e-book library is suddenly going to bring sales to a screeching halt.
e-books, in the current incarnation, are not rivalrous and are much easier to copy and disseminate.
When I have that physical copy, the (mostly) only person I have to blame is myself for not maintaining my items integrity.
I used to love to own stuff. Had great pride of my mp3 collection with pristine ID3 tags, my Star Trek TNG collection, or the piles of magazines and books...
After my last couple of moves between cities, I got tired of having to carry stuff around. Or to keep things organized, sync'ed, backed up across multiple devices. What a waste of time and money.
Can't say I won this battle yet, but at least I started to be more rational. Started donating half my books, and only purchasing ebooks (except for programming languages; still prefer the dead tree version). Also gave away DVDs, almost all CDs (still need to rip a few rare ones before giving away). Threw away most magazines, except for MakeMag and Circuit Cellar.
A couple of more moves and I'll be really free :)
ps: speaking of donating stuff, a friend created an awesome startup for exactly that reason: http://www.bondsy.com. Rather useful for things that you still care, but it's time to find a new home for it.
I only buy ebooks now. I use Spotify. I've sold my CD's to a used record store. I've stopped collecting mp3's.
Not having a bunch of physical cruft (and not having to manage it) is better.
University libraries are funded by tuition, and may allow non-university access for a fee.
I think folks are missing one aspect of the Netflix-style experience; discovery. Sure, the joy of flipping through the sci-fi/fantasy section in the local bookstore or library is an unparallelled experience -- but I've found book discovery via Amazon to provide me with far more than simply gazing at shelves.
It's not only the product consumption experience that is changing, but how we interact with books in general. And while I'm a big fan of libraries, we're all getting used to metadata, social annotations, reviews and suggestions -- add that to the ease of access an 'all you can eat' approach provides, and I for one am looking forward to where it leads. (mind you, I read anything from 10 to 20 books a month, so I'd definitely benefit from this kind of service!)
Or the Oyster travel card:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14836.aspx
?
"Oyster takes inspiration from the famous literary line in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, "the world's mine oyster." All the pleasures of reading are yours for the taking, no matter where you go."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/06/ebooks-on-borro...
I'm sure the iPhone-only offering might prove controversial, but I don't doubt that an iPad version will be coming soon. iPhone-only makes sense for me - I prefer to read books in short chunks: on the Muni, waiting in line, a few minutes before bed, etc. The Kindle app has done an excellent job of making the best of the limited real estate, I'm optimistic that Oyster will do so as well.
You only get 1 book a month with the base Audible subscription, but you get pretty heavy discounts on purchasing books.
You also get to keep the audiobook.
I propose: "I audio-read an audio-book".
The new 5th Generation screen is quite nice in Landscape mode.
I initially read on a Kindle 3rd Generation eReader, but they were pretty fragile (I had three break on me in 18-months time), so I got used to using my iPod Touch. I'm so used to it now, I've lost interest in reading physical books.
- It's iPhone only. This will, of course, change. They have to launch somewhere first.
- We already have public libraries and Overdrive. Sure, they are out there but they don't solve the problem that Oyster does. If you just want to flip through a bunch of books and see what you feel like reading, your current options are to go to a physical bookstore or library or hope Amazon or Google Books has enough to satisfy you in their limited previews. Imagine that as you're reading a book, you come across a reference another and being able to easily jump to the reference with no hassles like putting the book on hold (as is almost always the case on Overdrive) or reaching a check out limit or having to get in the car and go find a hard copy. Even the Kindle lenders library heavily restricts the number of books you can use at once. Having the full text of an ever-growing library at your fingertips is, if using Spotify is a close enough parallel, something that can't be fully appreciated until it's experienced.
- Price. If you usually buy at least one book a month and you can assume you'll probably do that indefinitely then it makes sense to instead start paying Oyster (or similar) indefinitely to get not one book a month, but all the books.
- Authors don't get paid. I think it's to early to say whether this will work out for authors or not. We don't know the business model. If it doesn't work for authors and publishers, they'll stop using it and Oyster will have to change their business model. In fact, this is the biggest risk as I see it. Netflix started with a good catalog and, for awhile, had a great catalog of movies. Now they're losing content and having to create their own, most of which I have no interest in. If publishers were to fall out of love with Oyster, Oyster's value would be severely diminished so they'll have to do what it takes to keep publishers (and hopefully by extension, authors) happy. One thing to consider, and maybe this is not as common as I'm guessing, but there are so many times where I've read a Kindle book and decided to buy a paper version to give the book a physical presence in my house. For certain authors, this could mean getting paid twice when people read their books.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=10007398...
If just eBooks, total complete meh.
Until then I wish them luck and sincerely hope this sort of business model takes off.
I must be missing the joke, but are you really suggesting that what the world is missing is all-you-can-eat food? Like … a buffet?
Now I'm not sure who was right...
They should call it "Netflix for ebooks".