Writing about Reading: Amazon Kindle Unlimited

Last week Amazon announced they were also entering the ebook subscription service, which I wrote about previously, by starting Kindle Unlimited.  The new service is a direct competitor to Oyster and Scribd, and while I love the promo video, that's about the only thing I love about it.

Here's the thing; Amazon is quickly turning into a Company Town.  They boast 600,000 titles (more than the 400,000 and 500,000 on Scribd and Oyster, respectively), but the thing they don't say is that most of those are from their own Amazon publishing division, and they don't have any of the Big 5 (Scribd and Oyster each have 2 of the Big 5, including HarperCollins who publishes my current Uhtred of Bebbenberg Saxon Stories from Bernard Cornwell).  And it doesn't look promising that any of them will come on board, with the recent Hachette contract negotiations stalling the way they have.  The one thing they have that the others don't is some audiobooks (the professional narration that comes with some ebooks) and audiobooks seem to be taking off a lot recently (Amazon owns Audible.com, too).

It's not surprising that they've taken this step - they've long had the Kindle Owners Lending Library where Kindle Owners can "borrow" one book a month.  How that will be affected by Kindle Unlimited remains to be seen.

Maybe Amazon is betting that people will publish their books on Amazon, make them available through the Kindle Unlimited Service, and maybe they can either force the Big 5 to work with them, or just circumvent them all together.  I'm all in favor of competition, and I think publishing companies are going to have to prove their worth much more than they ever have before, but that's where my agreement with Amazon ends.  Replacing one giant behemoth of a company with another doesn't seem to be that great for Authors or Readers either.

I'm curious as to whether this will affect normal kindle ebook sales (I'm betting not, at least not right away, since they don't have the Big 5) and how the kindle bestseller lists will be affected (apparently they are already being affected since "checkouts" are counted towards bestsellers).

I always tend to root for the scrappy little guy.  In the Amazon/Hachette dispute, I'm on Amazon's side.  Amazon vs Oyster and/or Scribd, though, is a different story, and though I've signed up for my 30 day free trial of Kindle Unlimited, I'm not giving up my Oyster account yet.

Writing about Reading: Oyster and Scribd

The Oyster Whoopie Pie Truck in NYC outside BookExpo

Because I spend a lot of time reading online publishing news, I kind of thought everyone's heard about Oyster and Scribd, the two main ebook subscription services.  I was recently reminded that most people don't have their head stuck in digital publishing news the way I do, so I thought I'd talk about them here.  I have a subscription to Oyster, so that's the main one I can talk about.  I've actually spoken with the founders of Scribd - a colleague of mine in our ebook project was on a panel with one of them, and they had questions about how librarians handle metadata.  But Oyster gave me free iced coffee and whoopie pies at BookExpo this year, so there my loyalties lie.

So both of these competing services are like Spotify for ebooks (leading me to wonder what the spotify of spotify is...man, that's deep....).  For $9.99 or $8.99/month for Oyster and Scribd respectively, you get access to a huge catalog of 500k or 400k books (again, respectively) that you can read.  You can read one a month, or 20 a month, or 100 a month.  Still the same price.

Oyster first launched last fall, and I used it when I was pumping in the middle of the night.  At the time they just had an iphone app, which I used on my ipad, which wasn't the greatest, but it was ok.  Now they have an ipad app, and they just launched on android and the kindle fire.

Neither one of them has the most current bestsellers from the big 5 publishers, though Oyster just announced a deal with Simon & Schuster (though it's for their backlist mostly, it appears).  The publishers are all wary that these kinds of services are going to cost them sales, so they're dipping their toes in.  That being said, they have great stuff from HarperCollins, Workman, Smashwords, and lots of others.  There's a lot of discoverability in these services with personalized recommendations, and the ability to share lists and the social aspect of reading and sharing  your reading with your friends (though you can opt to read in private mode if you're reading something smutty that you don't want people to know about!).

Oyster's reader is totally wonky, which I kind of hate, especially now because I'm used to it, and so I wind up trying to do the same actions when I'm reading on my kindle app, and it's all very confusing.  You scroll up, which is just weird.  Rather than across.  Like you're reading a scroll or something.  Maybe that was the plan.  Tie it all to medieval scrolls and Gutenberg or something.

There aren't a ton of variations to choose from in terms of font size, etc., though they did just add the option to have night mode with your favorite font.  In a previous version, night mode had its own font, which I didn't like.  Now I can keep my favorite font, and just switch it to night mode so the screen is dark.  You can download up to 10 titles at a time to read offline, which is good for when you're away from home and wifi, like on a long flight.  And there are all the normal highlight, notes, etc., buttons.

What I really love about these services is how I can read books I would never usually try otherwise because it doesn't cost anything more than the subscription fee.  It's much the same affect as being at the library.  The thing is, the ebook library services don't provide that same experience because the main vendors have a one-checkout-at-a-time model replicating the physical world (even our ebook platform does that; it's what the publishers want and understand, with the exception of Workman who are interested in trying unlimited simultaneous use models, and are doing so in North Carolina on a platform there, but that's a different story), so there are waiting lists for most titles.  With Oyster, I see something I like and I can start reading it without putting it on hold.  It provides instant gratification.

I'm definitely getting my money's worth from Oyster, and I've discovered several new authors that I wouldn't have tried otherwise.  If you're a bookworm, these kinds of services are worth a try.  I can't speak to Scribd as much, but I'm sure they offer the same features (if not more - they've actually been around longer, but only just launched their consumer service).  Sure, they don't have the big bestsellers right now, but they have great stuff (I've had the experience several times of buying a book - like Bernard Cornwell - from Amazon, only to see it show up on Oyster - new note to self...always check Amazon wishlist against Oyster first!).

And while you don't own the books, you don't "own" any ebooks, unless you break the DRM, which is illegal.  Amazon can your ebooks back at any time if they find you violated the terms of service or something.  It's a philosophical sort of question, but I'm much more getting into having access to something, even if it means paying each month for that access, than having ownership of it.  $9.99/month for access to millions of songs or 500k books doesn't seem that bad a deal.  Sure, it's often free at the library (and I'm biased and need to put that in there) but again...instant gratification.

So I'm an Oyster fan.  Sometime I'm going to have to try Scribd, just so I can compare easily.  Until then, if you ever want an Oyster invite, get one from me so I get a free month!  Shameless plug, but there you go.

Writing about Reading: new eBook company TotalBooX

In my professional life, one of my roles is as the New Products columnist for Public Libraries magazine, and much of what I wind up writing about are eBook products, since that's where my big interest lies.  I just found this new product that's been around for a while for individuals, and just launched into LibraryLand, so I thought I'd share about it here, too.  Note: this isn't the text of my complete article, so I'm not breaking any agreements of not publishing anywhere else first :)

As if it weren't hard enough to keep track of all the eBook models out there (simultaneous users, one book/one user, pay-per-download, etc,) there's a new vendor on the scene with another potentially disruptive service model. Seemingly aware of the statistics that show that most people do not read an entire eBook, TotalBooX, an Israeli company that just launched into the library space (and sponsored an eBook program at ALA), has a model where libraries pay not just per book, but per actual page read by their patrons. Sounds complicated, but they're committed to making it work for libraries.

One interesting note that differentiates it from other models is that the patron keeps the pages that they've downloaded. If they read an entire book, the book stays on their device “indefinitely.” So patrons can download hundreds of titles, but the library only pays for the pages that the patron actually reads, and those pages stay on the patron's device. A library signs up by signing a usage agreement, and then creating and adding funds to an initial account; the amount is determined by a variety of factors including size. The pricing is as a percentage of the book; so if a reader only reads 10% of the book, the library is charged 10% of the book price.

They currently have about 20,000 titles available for download through some well known publishers including F+W Media, Red Wheel Weiser, Sourcebooks and others. They claim that other partnerships are coming soon. The app for library patrons is available on android and iPads tablets.

The service is available for individuals as well as libraries, and I tried it out on my android phone. One thing that could be confusing is that they have two apps; one for library patrons, and a separate one for the general public. So if my library is a customer, and I use them as an individual, I need to download two apps.

Because I don't know any libraries in my area that are hooked into their system yet, I downloaded the individual app. Incidentally, it took three tries as I kept getting error messages. I'm not on the newest phone, but that still seems to require a certain amount of determination and perseverance from the user.

Once I create an account (I would assume with a library account that this would include entering a barcode and pin), I am greeted with a sadly empty bookshelf, and a message telling me to get books. When I click there, I'm taken to recommended titles. The top recommended titles all seem to do with vampires so I check out the other options.

They have browseable categories, as well as a “Shelves” button, which is a neat touch – there are different subjects, and I can download the entire “Shelf” of that subject, ie Fun Reading, which was created and shared by a librarian. So I could also put together shelves, say with books about the Hundred Years' War, and share that shelf. If I see a shelf that interests me, I download the entire shelf, and again, I'm only charged when I read pages. This strikes me as a sort of “pinterest” for books. There is a Boy Scouts shelf someone created with first aid and survival books. A Vegan Friendly shelf with books on being vegan. I could see a library taking advantage of these tools to create Shelves with local interest titles, or titles that highlight programming in the library, for example.

Even though I do read a lot of fiction, I downloaded a Shelf called “I don't read Fiction.” When I went to My Library, the books were all there. I chose a book on the Vikings, and it downloaded easily enough. Once reading, the controls at the top allow me to go back to the library, go to the table of contents, change the font size (only 2 options, sadly) look at my bookmarks, and add a bookmark. One big thing I missed was the ability to change the background (from the cream/yellow and black text that is the default) or have a Night Mode, but I presume these are advances that may come down the line.

I'm not going to keep the app on my phone - there are just too many eReading apps on my phone, and too many books easily available for me to add one more.  Which, incidentally, brings about a whole philosophical question on the nature of how books and music, which used to be reserved for the learned elite, are now so available that I have something like 6 ereading apps on my phone right now, all loaded with books, or linked to a library account where I can get more (or streaming, like Oyster, so I never run out).  I also have several music apps - Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Prime Music, PC Radio (which links to streams of all the radio stations in the UK - I use it to get Radio 4), and ClassicFM (the UK's pop classical music station). 

That begs the question of how we will value information like books and music in the future, when it is so readily available.  But that's a different subject for a different type of column.  One thing is certain; it makes curation of all these options so much more important.