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Oyster is launching an e-book store

wired.com

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Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#21

Post by jasode »

cwyers wrote: post #19
jasode wrote: post #7

Speaking as someone who is not familiar with Oyster… The journalist (Davey Alba) has left out some critical context to drive home the significance of Oyster’s foray into "ebook retail". After doing some research, here’s the part that the Wired article doesn’t make explicit: Yes, the Oyster subscription service is has titles from "all 5 big publishers" and yes, it is "unlimited" but the catch is that the content is mo…

It seems like the analytics the article talks about are from the unlimited service Oyster operates, and the analytics being offered is contrasted to services like Netflix. I think Amazon still probably offers the publishers information about retail sales.

I'm not an expert on the Kindle device (and the Kindle app for Android and iOS) but I understood that amazon has fine-grained "page reading behavior" data from the Kindle ecosystem. Data like what pages readers bookmark, the relative position of where readers "give up" on finishing a book, etc. I'm guessing this is the data that amazon is not sharing with the publishers.

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#22

Post by HelloMcFly »

For what it's worth to anyone interested in Oyster, I've found Scribd to be the better product. I like the UI better, it's cheaper, and the access to audiobooks and comics is nice. Maybe Oyster does those latter things since I've tried it.

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#23

Post by tomjen3 »

jasode wrote: post #7

Speaking as someone who is not familiar with Oyster… The journalist (Davey Alba) has left out some critical context to drive home the significance of Oyster’s foray into "ebook retail". After doing some research, here’s the part that the Wired article doesn’t make explicit: Yes, the Oyster subscription service is has titles from "all 5 big publishers" and yes, it is "unlimited" but the catch is that the content is mo…

That seems to me to ruin any point of Oyster. 10 usd/month is already redicously expensive given that most books are less than that as a kindle book and that most readers doesn't read a book a month (most people don't read a book at all after HS, but they aren't the target market). To then charge full retail price on top of that for books one would actually want. What are they thinking?

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#24

Post by publicfig »

jjoonathan wrote: post #18
publicfig wrote: post #13

Almost every article I read about this company involves the term "Netflix for Books" in the headline. Very few involve the name of the company, Oyster. I legitimately wonder if that hurts or helps them as a brand. It does imply the depth of library that Netflix has in video, which Oyster does not have given my experience. I also assume if you search for "netflix books", they'll pretty much own the front page of resul…

> Oyster does not have ... the depth of library that Netflix has in video ... given my experience. Given that Netflix's catalog has a reputation for providing frequently underwhelming selection, ouch.

The difference is that Netflix selection actually does have quite a bit in my experience, it's just that as time goes on, I've already watched all of the best things. Netflix is a product that people use often and in ways rarely before seen in media consumption. It's like eating at the same restaurant every day for years. No matter how much they offer, you're going to get tired of eating the things you like all the time.

Oyster, on the other hand, just doesn't have the collection to start with. It has a bunch of books that are either public domain (therefore free through many services) or not incredibly well known (which is fine, but hard to find things to read when people tend to already have so many items on their "to read" list). Once again, this was only my experience with the product.

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#25

Post by bryanlarsen »

M8 wrote: post #2

Modern russian literature has an interesting phenomenon. There is a huge old-school website where authors post their books before being published chapter by chapter for free to get feedback and corrections. For example this is one of my favourites: http://samlib.ru/t/tahion https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h... It's like Steam early access for books. Is there something like that in english-s…

Not really, although some authors do this in a more fragmented fashion on various niche sites. For example, https://www.literotica.com/s/dream-drive-ch-01 is a really good book that will be pulled from literotica and sold via Amazon once it's done. The example I pointed to doesn't have a lot of sex in it, it's more like a fantasy/RPG based Ready Player One.

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#26

Post by LukeShu »

falcolas wrote: post #4
M8 wrote: post #2

Modern russian literature has an interesting phenomenon. There is a huge old-school website where authors post their books before being published chapter by chapter for free to get feedback and corrections. For example this is one of my favourites: http://samlib.ru/t/tahion https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=h... It's like Steam early access for books. Is there something like that in english-s…

I don't know of any clearinghouse for this, but I know a few authors who do this on their own. One such example: http://demo.ilona-andrews.com

Another example is Andy Weir's "The Martian", which he originally published chapter-by-chapter on his personal site http://www.galactanet.com/ .

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#27

Post by ghaff »

tomjen3 wrote: post #23
jasode wrote: post #7

Speaking as someone who is not familiar with Oyster… The journalist (Davey Alba) has left out some critical context to drive home the significance of Oyster’s foray into "ebook retail". After doing some research, here’s the part that the Wired article doesn’t make explicit: Yes, the Oyster subscription service is has titles from "all 5 big publishers" and yes, it is "unlimited" but the catch is that the content is mo…

That seems to me to ruin any point of Oyster. 10 usd/month is already redicously expensive given that most books are less than that as a kindle book and that most readers doesn't read a book a month (most people don't read a book at all after HS, but they aren't the target market). To then charge full retail price on top of that for books one would actually want. What are they thinking?

I can't find the reference, but a few years ago, I remember Tim O'Reilly making some point around book pricing to the effect that time was ultimately the limiting factor for book consumption. In other words, you can drop the price to zero and most people will still consume a relatively limited number of books. (Of course, O'Reilly has a subscription service themselves but that's arguably a bit different because most of the books in Safari are the sort of things that many people will dip into rather than read cover-to-cover.)

$10/month does seem high for most people. That's at least 10 Kindle or used book purchases--including bestsellers. That's about what I read (excluding books that I want in physical form).

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#29

Post by higherpurpose »

smackfu wrote: post #20
mklim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to this, from going through their website, it's not as simple as "old" books are free and "new" books are a premium. I did a cursory look through their catalog and it looks like any book that is still selling well and under copyright has a price on top of the subscription fee. The DaVinci Code came out 12 years ago and is still $10 on top of a subscription, Storm Front (15 years old) is still $10 as well, A Ga…

That's bizarre, since those prices are basically the same as buying them retail.

Yes, I don't like that. They should at least be say 20 percent cheaper.

Re: Oyster is launching an e-book store

#30

Post by alberth »

Why not the Public Library?

My parents are in their late 70s, they both use a Kindle Paperwhite, and they figured out on their own that US Public Libraries allow you to digitally check out books to your Kindle for FREE.

I had no idea of this, yet my 70+ year old parent figured it out ... and you don't even need to go into the physical library, it's all down over the web or via an app.

Which is why I suspect most companies have not tried this "Netflix for books" business because it already exist for FREE and it's called the US Public Library.

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