Those who think fondly of ye olde video rental stores are few and far between. With the advent of Netflix, video rental chains like Blockbuster and its comrades were soon forgotten. So too in the world of books – sales of “real” books have been limping along for a while now, with many wondering how long they can soldier on.
With the recent double whammy launches of Oyster Books (essentially Netflix for books) and Amazon’s Kindle Matchbook program (which bundles every book bought from Amazon.com since the early 1990s with that title’s e-version), we have to wonder: are we just begging for the end of the printed word?
According to one estimate from the LA Times, the total revenue generated from eBook sales in the U.S. topped $3 billion in 2012, which equates to a 44% jump from the year before. Meanwhile, across the pond, eBook sales in the UK quietly turned in a record year, leaping 134% from 2011 to 2012.
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Evidence of the rapidly growing popularity of e-books is not hard to come by and Oyster is cashing in. While e-Readers and digital books are hardly in short supply, Oyster wants to create the first, real dedicated subscription service for books, while offering the same kind of personalized, social content discovery one has come to expect from Netflix and Amazon.
Oyster’s model is straightforward. For a monthly fee of $9.95, subscribers get access to a library of 100,000 titles, with offerings from big name publishers such as HarperCollins, Melville House, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Workman. From there, members can peruse its library, check out recommendations from its Editorial Staff if in need of some guidance and be off and reading with a few quick taps.
Much like Netflix, Oyster allows readers to peruse its library by genre and title, while offering suggestions on what’s getting buzz in the news. As with most recommendation services, the more active you are within the app, the more you read, the better its recommendations become.
There are two main concerns being raised.
First, how is Oyster structuring its deals with publishers? Are publishers or authors being paid every time their book is selected or is the content being paid for up-front? The answer here isn’t clear just yet.
Second, is Oyster really impinging on bookstores’ territory? Not necessarily. If a bookstore’s business is books, it doesn’t automatically mean that everyone else whose business is books is a competitor.
It’s entirely possible that Oyster, currently only available for the iPhone, will simply provide a complementary service, since it’s strengths don’t really overlap with those of brick and mortar stores. For example, in regard to stores, there is physical ownership and front-listed print books, whereas Oyster model focuses on paid, back-listed, ebooks. From that perspective then, Oyster proves more of a threat to independent used book stores, which also focus on inexpensive, back-listed, pre-owned books.
The key advantage that Oyster has though is that it has homed in on the smartphone market. While most would assume that readers prefer tablets (or anything with a bigger screen) when they read, Oyster is counting on the fact that, unlike tablets, people always have their phones with them.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that Oyster is simply a rental service. Your monthly subscription buys you access to as many books as you can read in a month and nothing more. You don’t own any of the books you read.
While old-school bibliophiles can perhaps breathe a sigh of relief that bookstores are safe (for now), Oyster undoubtedly presents an interesting new option for those with more flexible reading predilections.
