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.

The Week in Books: Island of the Lost

Another fantastic Oyster find, I devoured Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the End of the World by Joan Druett this past week.  It's a true story about two simultaneous shipwrecks on Auckland Island in the 1860's (though they never met each other, being on opposite ends with a mountain range in between them).

Auckland Islands is an archipelago south of New Zealand, so they are sub-antarctic.  The main inhabitants are seals, during their mating season, and when the calves are very young.  There are also some edible roots, and some mussels and other bits of seafood.  So really, it's not a place where you want to be shipwrecked.

The first shipwreck, the Grafton, was in stark contrast to the second, which arrived about 8 months later.  The first was made up of five men who excelled in teamwork and problem solving.  One of them, a Frenchman named Francois Raynal, actually managed to build a forge with stuff they salvaged from the wreck, and was able to make a mold for nails.  They were shipwrecked in summer, so had some time to build a cozy cabin with a fireplace, make some nice beds, use seal blood for making ink to write journals, and use salt they salvaged to salt meat enough to last them through winter.  They had a lifeboat they could use for hunting, worked amazingly really well together, and managed to thrive in their environment, coming up with one plan after another for escape.

The second, the Invercauld, had 25 men and wrecked on the other side of the mountain.  Six of them died right away, leaving them with 19.  They wound up splintering apart into groups, one of which may have resorted to cannibalism.  The captain completely lost touch with reality, and had a pretty major freakout. The officers pulled rank on the regular sailors, one of whom seemed to be the only one with any brains in the bunch.   It was a complete contrast with the first group, which had such a strong bond.  This group was losing people left and right, and not seeming to come up with any ways to make shelter or find food.

Their story was gripping.  I figured they had to have figured out a way to get off, or be rescued, because the story talks about testimony later on, but I had to keep reading to find out the way they escaped.  It was fascinating reading about the strength of humanity when pushed up against the wall.

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.

The Week in Books: The House at Sea's End

One of the things I love about the Oyster eBook subscription service ($9.99/month, unlimited reading of all their books, like Spotify for eBooks - if you want an invitation, email me and I'll send you one that will give you some free time) is how I find new authors thanks to their recommendations.  Elly Griffiths is one of those newly-discovered-thanks-to-Oyster authors.

To be completely honest, I chose this book because of its cover.  The color is my favorite shade of blue.  I thought the font was cute.  I had no idea it was a mystery until I started reading it, and thought, "hmm, this seems like a mystery."  Now I'm in love with Elly Griffiths, and am going to read all her books.

So, Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist in the UK, and she is on secondment with the police force part time, so she's part time at the university and part time with the police.  She helps solve mysteries based on archaeological evidence.  This one started off when four bodies were found in a part of the cliffs that was becoming exposed thanks to erosion.  The guess was that they were German, and were shot and killed during WWII when a German invasion by the sea was a true fear.

Then contemporary people start dying.  At first it's old people whom the police want to question about the bodies because they might have memories of what happened during the war in the little town.  Those deaths don't seem very suspicious.  But then other people start dying, too.  Suddenly there are dead people all around, and Ruth is trying to solve what happened 70 years ago, and seems to be being covered up today.

I'm only recently getting into mysteries; within the past three years or so, since discovering Rhys Bowen, and this series will be a new favorite, I'm sure.  I'm waiting to start the next one in the series until I know I'll have some big chunks of time, because I'm not going to want to stop reading once I get started.