The Future of Books Looks a Lot Like Netflix

[ctg]

Struggling against plunging prices and a shrinking audience, book publishers think they’ve found a compelling vision for the future: magazines.

Today, the San Francisco-based literary startup Plympton launched an online fiction service called Rooster. It’s sold by subscription. It’s priced by the month. And it automatically delivers regular content to your iPhone or iPad. In other words, it’s a book service that’s packaged like a magazine service. And it’s just the latest example of how books are being packaged like magazines.

With Rooster, readers pay $5 per month in exchange for a stream of bite-sized chunks of fiction. Each chunk takes just 15 minutes or so to read, and over the course of a month, they add up to two books. The service builds on the success of Plympton’s Daily Lit, which emails you classic literature in five-minute installments.

The Future of Books Looks a Lot Like Netflix | Wired Business | Wired.com

 

[ctg]

I would like to not that even though this article talks about the transformation it is mostly coming from the industry point of view. Not from the consumer or from the authors.

 

[alchemate]

I think if writers retain some individuality in there work, they will become a commodity in the industry. If not, companies like Rooster can sell carbon-copy writer's work for pennies on a dollar, like so.

 

[Nerds_feather]

This sounds more like a niche thing, tbh.

 

[millymollymo]

Not really a new idea, ctg, but I can see where you are going with it.
You can sign up to Angry Robot's/Strange Chem/Exhibit A s 6 or 12 month subscription, and get all their published e-books in that period, The Robot Trading Company eBookstore - robottradingcompany.com A few small presses attempted flash fic direct to your inbox a year or two back (not genre though)

 

[nightdreamer]

Doesn't appeal to me as either a reader or a writer. Especially as a reader, because I don't want 15-minute chunks dribbling in on someone else's schedule. I'd much rather read on my schedule. Sorry.

 

[George Ian]

It doesn't immediately appeal to me either - but I reckon anything that gets quality writing to audiences is worth a try.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I can totally see this happening now.

What you need to realise is that big business often values subscriber numbers over sales, because the former is guaranteed income.

That's why so many companies look to lock you into a contract for broadband or energy, or satellite services. It doesn't matter to them how much you're paying - they just want to reassure investors with subscriber numbers.

 

[tinkerdan]

Sribd is a good place to start to take a look at this.

They recently partnered with Smashwords and any author that opts in to let their work be a part of Scribd subscriptions has been offered a free year of Scribd so this allows the Smashwords author a chance to see how the whole interface works.

I think that the interface and frustrations for readers are going to be the larger issues. The subscription does not cover all books offered by Scribd and those books that are covered are encrypted for copy protection and the interface is limited by the imagination of the IT's in charge of Scribd and my experience says that is limited. It is not conducive to anyone who likes to take notes on the fly for review purposes and there is no way to check for word usage or spelling through the interface because the encryption negates all the browser tools. The bottom line is that its a frustration overall. For the reader the interface tends to cut lines of text because of some spacing line bug they have and depending on how you format the reader it will lose whole lines or it will munge them together to make them unreadable. (This same problem exists for kindle for chrome and so far Amazon has ignored my pleas to have it fixed.)

The bottom line, so far, is that they care only about subscriptions they have no quality control and care little about the reader experience; its like renting damaged books from the library which is something I would never do. So there is a long way for these to go although I have personally opted to buy the books of interest, I started on Scribd, on Amazon so that I could get something of better quality. Then I read them on my kindle where I can do what I must with the fewest of interface generated errors.

For the author whose publisher uses them as advertisement it is another portal to sell books that are not offered with the subscription for the subscribers.