Scribd have been describing themselves as "Netflix for books" for a while now and, as they have quite a few books I want to read, I will be signing up there soon.

Now I see a couple of news articles on this idea:

Two startups are trying to do for e-books what Netflix does for movies.

Oyster and Scribd let you read as many books as you want for a monthly price -- $10 for Oyster and $9 for Scribd.


I was skeptical at first. I can never find enough time to read, and I'm picky about what I do read. I was worried about their limited book selections.

But I found plenty to read in no time, and I found myself reading more than I normally would. These services are great if you have a long weekend or a vacation coming up, or in my case three weeks of travels from California to New York.

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There are enough books to keep you busy for months or years. Oyster has more than 500,000 titles, while Scribd has more than 400,000.

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Both work on iPhones, iPads and Android devices, including Kindle Fire tablets. Oyster also works on Nook tablets, while Scribd has apps for Windows devices. Only Scribd lets you read on Web browsers on personal computers, though Oyster plans to add that soon.

Apps for both services offer features typical for e-books. You can start a book on one device and pick up where you left off on another, though I've often run into syncing problems with both. You can see where you are in a book, change text size and add notes. The options aren't as extensive as what I'm used to with Kindle devices and apps, though.

Oyster lets you store up to 10 books per device to take with you on the road, while Scribd lets you save up to 20 books. Both services permit reading on up to six devices.

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If you read just one book a month, you're probably better off buying it -- typically for less than the monthly subscription price. You own the book outright that way, and the selection is better. With Oyster and Scribd, access to the books ends once you cancel your subscription, which you can do anytime.

If you read two or three books a month, consider a discount e-book service. With Entitle, for instance, you get two e-books a month for $10, and you own them forever.

Oyster and Scribd are good if you read three or more books, or if you like to sample -- start several books before deciding which ones interest you enough to finish.

In a sense, these services aren't like Netflix because it takes longer to finish a book. You can get your money's worth watching 10 hours of Netflix on a single weekend. Those 10 hours might be enough time for just one or two books.

viewtopic.php?f=1324&t=833358

Oyster was one I was less aware of but they seem to have a good stock:

The popular book-subscription service Oyster has finally arrived on Android devices, Amazon's Kindle Fire, and the Barnes & Noble Nook HD.

Launching today, the Android iteration of "the Netflix for books" sports a new, responsive design tailored for the myriad Android device display sizes and new fonts to choose from. The app now also offers a "read time" feature, which aims to give readers an idea of how long it'll take to finish a book.

Oyster's buffet-style approach to reading has proven popular: $9.95 a month gets you unfettered access to a library of over 500,000 e-books, including titles from massive publishers like HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Simon & Schuster. There's even a children's section stocked with kid-friendly books, including some titles from Disney Publishing.

viewtopic.php?f=1274&t=812145

I like the way you can load up quite a few books, rather than Amazon's one at a time and synching across devices is good, as I tend to have both a reading and desktop applications.

Anyone used these services? So you find them good value for money? Any problems with synching across devices? What kind of formats/DRM to they use, for example, is there a mix like there is on Overdrive where you can often (depending on publisher) pick from a range going from Adobe Digital Editions-protected PDF to a DRM-free ePub? Have you found it value for money?

IMHO these have a long way to go to not so legal options like this site or ebook farm, which have much larger selection, higher quality releases and no DRM bullshit.

Kindle Unlimited is out, has anyone tried it?

[Tidal]

Perused the site. Only available in the USA; and I'm not impressed by the quality or recency of the offerings.

No books of current interest (e.g., bestsellers). No books at the higher-priced end, which reflects their popularity. Few books have a high number of ratings PLUS 4+ stars.

One upside of Amazon Unlimited - we should get more requests fulfilled

I am curious to know how they are going to redistribute the cash to authors. Sounds like Amazon might be about to get itself into another dispute before resolving the previous ones!!

Amazon has not said how authors and publishers will be paid for participating in Kindle Unlimited, but it's unlikely that the models currently used for e-book sales through their store will do the trick.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/201 ... bezos.html

Amazon's move will be as discombobulating for the book publishing industry as the advent of Spotify was for the music industry. Stand by, therefore, for howls of protest from publishers and authors on how streaming produces infinitesimal royalties compared with the old publishing paradigm.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... publishers

It does sound like they've got a reasonable percentage of Amazon's ebooks available - more than Oyster or Scribd (100 and 200k more, respectively). I suppose it depends on what you are looking for:

Part of what makes Amazon's service so appealing is the fact they're offering you access to a catalog of 600,000 e-books. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to read any book that you want. Amazon's Kindle Unlimited catalog is heavy on classics, famous series such as "Harry Potter" or "Lord of the Rings" and, of course, the books that authors self-publish on Amazon.

But if you want any of the top five current New York Times fiction bestsellers, for example, you're not going to find them in the Unlimited catalog. (They're on Amazon, just not as a part of the Kindle Unlimited pool.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... -worth-it/

The big questions is - is it worth it?

Kindle Unlimited is $9.99 per month. So you'll be paying Amazon, whose chief executive Jeffrey Bezos owns The Washington Post, around $120 per year for the unfettered e-book access. If you're habitually spending money on more than one book per month, then it's a service to think about. It has its perks for big book buyers -- namely that don't have to worry about spending money on a book you end up hating.

But, chances are, you aren't reading more than one book per month. In January, the Pew Internet and American Life Project asked how many books the typical American had read in the past year.

The answer? Five.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... -worth-it/

That last one also mentions a previous overview of "Netflix for books"-style services:

I recently did a rundown of other companies that are trying to be the "Netflix for books," before this announcement. What I found is that no book subscription service has everything you want to read.

Oyster, for example, has access to a lot of the back-catalogues of publishers big and small, but not many bestsellers. Scribd has a great selection of quicker reads, thanks to a broad selection of documents, poetry and short stories. And Entitle, another type of books subscription service, does have bestsellers from Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins -- but there's a limit to how many books you can buy per month.

Gizmodo also have a handy analysis:

if you'd like to know immediately whether this is the digital borrowing service for you, we've got the answer:

Probably not...

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The biggest knock against Kindle Unlimited, though, is that its offerings overlap so much with Amazon Prime. Prime doesn't include audiobooks, but it does offer the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, which allows you to check out one book (out of a selection of 500,000) per month as part of your overall subscription. The Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited selections appear to be largely the same. Kindle Unlimited, though, costs $120 per year to Prime's $100. Which is confusing, given that with Prime you also get free shipping, access to Amazon Music, Amazon's streaming video service, and that Lending Library access. It's an incredible deal, and a no-brainer if you ever order stuff from Amazon or have any interest in its music and movie selection. Now, you do need a Kindle device to access the Lending Library, which means some Prime users don't have access. But if you plan on using the lending services for more than a year, buying a Kindle device would actually give you more bang for your buck in the long run than signing up for a separate $100/year service because you don't have one.

Moreover, Kindle Unlimited isn't the only lending service. Subscription book-lending companies Oyster and Scribd both offer strong libraries. Scribd ($9/month) has 400,000 selections, which is objectively less than Amazon, but includes deals with the large publishing houses you won't find on Unlimited, so the ratio of books you'll actually want to read vs. weird filler is better. Oyster ($10/month) is in the same situation: the lending library is 500,000 strong, smaller than what Amazon is offering, but with the advantage of a selection that includes books published by the large publishing houses. Want to read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson or Born Standing Up by Steve Martin? You'll need Oyster or Scribd. This doesn't mean you'll necessarily prefer Oyster or Scribd's library over Amazon's, but you might. (I do.) Aside from the high profile franchises like Harry Potter, Amazon's overall selection lacks a distinct advantage over competitors.

http://gizmodo.com/should-you-get-amazon-kindle-unlimited-1607137417

Or people could just get their books from the local library...

So anyone signed up to any of these yet?

[tullia10]

I've never pirated another mp3 since Spotify, and I hoped that this would be the same for books… alas, that's not yet the case
Thanks for your post

I've never pirated another mp3 since Spotify, and I hoped that this would be the same for books… alas, that's not yet the case

Well I suppose it is like picking between Netflix and Amazon's video service - you pick the one that contains the most content that you want or you switch between them on a regular basis. It'd be great to have everything with one service, but I've long given up on that dream when media companies like to sign exclusive deals with one firm or another.

Another review:

Amazon's new "unlimited" e-book service lets you read 600,000 books. That sounds like more than you'll ever read, but I found myself struggling to find the books I wanted.

It turns out that the library of 600,000 is bit like a small bookstore with a few current titles such as "The Hunger Games," attached to a block-sized bargain bin of obscure stuff mixed with "Robinson Crusoe" and other classics that are in the public domain and available for free online anyway.

Startups Scribd and Oyster both offer better value for avid readers of popular books.

Though Oyster has only 500,000 books and Scribd has 400,000, both offer extensive libraries from two of the largest publishers, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. Kindle Unlimited doesn't.

Kindle Unlimited and Oyster both cost $10 a month, while Scribd goes for $9. All three offer the first month free.

Weeks ago, as I was reviewing Scribd and Oyster, I asked colleagues to suggest books that ought to be on such services. I also added titles from my own wish list. Of the 75 I checked, Oyster had 17 and Scribd had 16. That's not a lot. I got even fewer with Kindle Unlimited — six matches, plus one that's free for everyone.

But through Amazon's $99-per-year Prime program, I could already read four of those six books for free on Kindle devices. Only "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson and "Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis require the Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Kindle Unlimited will have to follow the same path and expand its library to be useful for most people.

With any of these services, you need to be reading three or more books a month to make it worth the subscription. Otherwise, buying the e-book through Amazon or a discount service such as Entitle is more economical. The limited selection makes it tougher to find those three books a month, especially for those who already get a book a month for free through Prime.

They suggest Amazon's pluses are on the audiobook and technological side, but I'm not sure that is going to swing people looking for a "Netflix for books".

At some point I will be giving them all a try when they are available here, as they all offer free trial periods.

[profprofessorson]

Really good point about overlap with Prime.

I think "Netflix for books" is not really a great analogy for any of these companies to use, for the simple reason that everyone can watch a movie in 2 hours but it takes some people 20 hours to read a book.

The person this service is perfect for reads at least 3-5 books a month regularly, never pirates and is for some reason dissatisfied with their public library and public domain options. It's a pretty small slice of general public, I think.

I think "Netflix for books" is not really a great analogy for any of these companies to use, for the simple reason that everyone can watch a movie in 2 hours but it takes some people 20 hours to read a book.

The person this service is perfect for reads at least 3-5 books a month regularly, never pirates and is for some reason dissatisfied with their public library and public domain options. It's a pretty small slice of general public, I think.

Well, I suspect people would be prepared to pay for the ease of access to the books (not everyone lives and easy stroll from a library and often they don't have the book you want) - you could argue that with pirating and TV broadcasts that people wouldn't want Netflix, but they do. As you say, the real problem is the pricing - on demand streaming seems like good value for money if you use it a lot (even then I suspect their business model relies on the average user only just breaking even or perhaps not making the best use of their service), but I think the pricing may need to be lower for the books and I think they'll adjust the price points over the next year to see what the sweet spot is for people. I imagine their will also be some market consolidation and tweaking of the offers - Oyster or Scribd getting snatched up by someone, perhaps even Amazon to get their hands on the licenses they have, and perhaps Prime getting downgraded to stop it competing with Kindle Unlimited.

However, perhaps now is the time to learn to speed-read. That'd get you value for money!!

[profprofessorson]

They might do okay at $5/m for people who only read a few books per year (i.e., almost everyone), maybe with an annual cap? Or maybe a "premium" service with access to bestsellers?

I'm probably in the top 1% of readers and I personally have no use for this service. I can read really fast, but I also have a full time job. Between mobilism, my library (in a metro area, granted) and the occasional purchase for those hard-to-finds, I've got more than enough reading material. For probably the next 10 years, lol.

Incidentally, I don't have Netflix either.