Lots of people in this thread are talking about this being scary for authors. When I was a kid, I got to read a ton of books any time I wanted. I got them at this place called a "library" where they let people come in and take books home with them to read for <i>free</i>.<p>People have always had the option to read books without buying them. In those days, going to the library was effectively the same effort as going to a book store. In fact, it was more convenient for my family. We happened to live a few blocks from the library and didn't need to drive across town to the mall to get books in dingy little B. Dalton bookstore.<p>I will grant that the economics in the eBook situation are dramatically different than with physical books, but I really wonder how different they really are. Local libraries already lend ebooks as well. I'm not sure why more people don't take advantage of that.
A few weeks ago Jon Evans of TechCrunch said this:<p>"Despite my techie contempt for their business practices, I really do want traditional publishers to survive, because their employees — unlike, I suspect, Amazon’s — tend to genuinely love books in the same way that I do, and because good editors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s hard to see how they can thrive fighting like this. In the long run their only real hope is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats for books,” if you will.<p><i>I’m not sure how successful that will be. Books are not like songs. But it’s hard to see where else their future lies.</i> Never mind the current Amazon vs. Hachette skirmish; that’s just a sideshow. Book publishers essentially conceded their long war with Amazon before it ever began, without even knowing what they were doing." [1]<p>Looks like he was spot on, and it looks like Amazon won the whole war.<p>EDIT: It looks like he predicted this almost a year ago in another article:<p>"With luck we’re entering a world in which readers have access to any and every book for a flat fee; authors get paid depending on how much they’re actually read; publishers remain a vital but decreasingly visible part of the process; physical books are still available via online print-on-demand and niche physical stores; and zillions of CC-licensed books are freely available to readers in the poor world who can’t yet afford books or subscription services. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems to me that that’s a win for absolutely everyone." [2]<p>And I have to agree, this looks like a big win for everyone.<p>[1] <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-war-is-that-one-day-it-will-end/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/14/the-only-tragedy-of-this-wa...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-out-your-books/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/07/its-almost-time-to-throw-ou...</a>
Most people don't spend $9.99 on books every month on average. If Amazon encourages people who are infrequent readers to devote more of their time/entertainment-dollars on reading, then this service will be a win-win for Amazon and authors.<p>Also, if my service is all-you-can-eat, I'm definitely going to take more risks with authors I haven't heard about. That is a definite win for unknown and unpromoted authors.<p>Some of the blockbuster authors may suffer lower revenues ... but fuck them. I'm less worried about JK Rowling who makes a billion dollars on each book, and already has plenty of incentive to write. I'm more worried about Professor Joe Schmoe, a Com. Sci. academic who has this really great AI story inside him, that needs just a little monetary incentive to come out.
It'll be fascinating to see how our relationship with books plays out over the next 10-20 years. On one hand, unlike music, books are very physical objects, their content very much associated with their form, used by many as decoration within their home. On the other hand, most of us only read most of our books once. I suspect that many, like me, then hang onto those books primarily for sentimental reasons (along with the slim chance that someone else might want to borrow them, future children might want to read them, we might re-read them one day, but probably never will), but that feels very much like a cultural fad, albeit quite a long-lived one!
Amazon is the new socialism. There are basic services which the government ought to provide -- access to unlimited books, movies, music, software, and similar. It's dramatically more economically efficient that way. The governments won't, for a whole range of reasons. Amazon seems to be stepping up. You pay a private tax, and you join a private government.
Awesome. This is a nail in the coffin for Oyster or whatever that other app was. You can't beat Amazon's selection or prices, and this just makes the Netflix comparison even better. Oof. Sucks for competition, good for my Kindle and my wallet.
I wonder about the average use specifics for kindle users. Obviously Amazon has insight into this and would set their pricing appropriately.<p>Assuming the kind of books listed here are the kind on the daily deal (1.99): The average user would have to read only 4-5 books a month to break even (say 9 books every two months counting taxes).<p>I doubt most users would read that consistently. Maybe the first month, but usage would likely drop, and the deal works out better in Amazon's favor until they quit. Which for many users could be until their credit card expires.<p>I probably only read 6 books a month at the most these days, and some months I probably drop down as low as 1 book every month several times a year. I'd probably enroll in this service so even if they have 9.99 normal cost ebooks, I think overall it'd work so Amazon doesn't lose much more than they would with their current structure.
Interesting. I wonder what this implies for authors. Amazon might take a cut currently, but the lion's share ends up with the author -- a royalty based scheme significantly changes the playing field, and I worry that it could be for the worse (<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353</a>).<p>EDIT -- and what it implies for publishers.
I hope this works on the iPhone although since the Kindle lending library does not I would not be surprised if it doesn't. Since I'm blind a $69 Kindle obviously won't work and I can't justify $200 for a Kindle Fire that I would use just to read books. I did the math and it would take me several years to make buying a Kindle Fire worth while verses just buying the books through Kindle.
This type of thing makes me wonder about the business model for authors. An obvious comparison is the music industry. It is common knowledge that almost no musicians make a majority of their money from sales of their music (and only elite acts really make any substantial money). Musicians basically give away their content in the hopes that it attracts people to their live events. Authors do the exact opposite and do numerous free events in hopes that it attracts people to purchase their books. I wonder if this will change over time or if these business models are caused by the inherit value of the content vs experience of each form of art. Stand up comedy probably exists in the middle ground of the two regarding the value of the content vs experience and standups generally follow the musician business model of giving the content away to attract people to their live events.
I would pay something similar just to browse selected sites all month long without encountering a hundred different pay walls.<p>for a voracious reader like myself this might be a great money saver depending on what is excluded. However it is quite possible to have more than you read for free just by surfing Amazon for all the free ebooks
This won't have the major publishing houses titles (beyond those who have agreed to work with Oyster). So no Penguin Random House, the market leader in print and audio. It also remains to be seen if the subscription model can work for books - they take longer to consume than movies or music. So you can imaging slower or busy readers being punished with a subscription unless they make it through 1.5 books per month which is where it makes sense to buy it. I don't think many people would like that over their head. Plus there's the library and used books, and just borrowing - all things we do way less of for movies and music.
Amazon Kindle Unlimited is really converging into what I talked about here: <a href="http://blog.minming.net/post/83447062229/unlimited-movies-music-books-magazines" rel="nofollow">http://blog.minming.net/post/83447062229/unlimited-movies-mu...</a>.<p>"I feel like there’s an opportunity here for Amazon to provide a all-you-can-consume digital lifestyle at a fixed subscription price. If we could subscribe to one single service and forget about every pay-as-you-go service, it would be quite an attractive proposition."<p>This is becoming all too real really fast.
Looks like the same book selection available through the Prime Kindle Owners Lending Library, which gives you one a month with Prime membership. A nice to have, but not worth paying extra for to me.
Here in California, libraries are offering bigger selections of e-books on-line, which usually come with two restrictions: limited time of readability on your device, and limited number of copies available (and a waiting list to manage access). Amazon has historically appeared to support these library programs, presumably because they make kindles more appealing to the core "book purchasing" demographic as well.<p>In the near future I hope to have limited access to all these books for free, or unlimited access for $9.99 a month, and the ability to easily switch between the two consumption models. That, for me, would be an easy sell. This is pretty much how i consume Hulu - most of the time, I just want to watch recent episodes of the Daily Show and am satisfied with the free tier. And when I want to get after specific content, I bump up to the paid tier for a bit.<p>I don't understand why "some content is always free" model isn't more popular in the content world. If Netflix offered something like three free movies a month, I would never "cancel" my account. They would get better brand loyalty, better app lock-in, and lower customer churn. Instead, I get annoyed at the always-on subscription model and cycle between subscribed and unsubscribed.<p>Digitization of content changed distribution patterns, which changed pricing patterns, and the combination of both changed consumption patterns. It feels like there is a feedback loop where now it makes sense for pricing and user management (acquisition, retention) strategies to adapt once again, this time to changes in user behavior and consumption patterns.
So they must be testing various parts of the Amazon Prime value proposition as piecework services. Lets see 'Unlimited {video | kindle | music}' for 9.95 each or get all three for $24.95. Seems Kindle is a safer way to start since neither Spotify or Netflix is going to respond competitively to book reader services.
It seems that you can search which books are going to be available through it, at last as of this moment<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s?url=node%3D9578129011&field-keywords=#{WHATEVER_YOURE_SEARCHING_FOR}" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/s?url=node%3D9578129011&field-keywords...</a><p>Selection seems extremely paltry, though.
Awesome. I've been hoping Amazon would do this, since Google or any of their competitors were too shortsighted to do this for books, even though it was their <i>only chance</i> to disrupt Amazon and actually take some market share in ebooks from them. But once again, Amazon is the one innovating and disrupting itself, even as an almost monopoly.<p>This should be great for people who want to read a lot of books, and could even encourage people who only read say 1 book per year, to read a lot more.
This is a pretty awesome deal when you consider it for a whole family. I go through a couple books a week reading with my daughter (generally in Kindle format on an iPad). We get what we can from the library, but she really likes series, and if we finish book 4 while book 5 is still a two week wait to check out I'll typically just buy it. Throw in my personal reading and my wife's and we're buying an average of 3-4 books each month.
This is a pretty awesome price if that audio book catalogue is Audibles. I signed up for Audible when I started commuting, 1 audio book a month would be just about right since I wanted to start reading asoiaf.. Turns out they split the book in 2 and I only got 16hrs in the month unless I paid notably more than I pay Netflix for unlimited. I decided that was rubbish and cancelled, unlimited is a much better model and this is an awesome price for it.
The business is in owning, managing and curating media catalogues, not in distribution anymore. Almost anyone of us here is capable in setting up a torrent server and distributing any number of books to any number of consumers. Same is valid for music and movies.
This looks scary for authors, and maybe it should. Like digital music and movies, the marginal cost of an ebook is pretty much zero. If you are an author, you need to rethink how to make money from your work. It won't be from selling $10 books much longer.
There is a lot of reaction on the source by indie authors, including Hugh Howey, on kboards :<p><a href="http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,189900.0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,189900.0.html</a>
Any idea what the catalogue will be?<p>Very interested if it includes the kindle editions of the various science and math textbooks offered.<p>E.g. having unfettered access to the entire Dover Books on Mathematics series would be a delight.
The convenience and efficiency of being able to read any book instantly will be a huge boost for education as well I think more people will start reading more books due to this product.
Once you get past the big name books where Amazon is probably subsidizing the costs, a lot of the content is Amazon-published. I wonder what that compensation looks like.
Will this compete with Safari Books Online (<a href="https://www.safaribooksonline.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.safaribooksonline.com/</a>)?
"Access to a huge panoply of books that are either in public domain or for which we're pretty sure most of you wouldn't pay for anyway!"
I don't understand what other people are complaining for.<p>Is this price too cheap? WHAT? too cheap? WHAT?<p>Is this price too expensive? So just don't buy it.<p>I don't understand.
First they made music a subscription service. And because I like music but I'm a poor struggling author, I didn't listen to those greedy musicians who said this was unfair. Screw you musicians. This Fantasy novel isn't going to get finished unless I can listen to my power-ballad spotify playlist.<p>Then they made video a subscription service. And because I didn't make videos (video being a lesser form of entertainment), I didn't complain. In fact it's great. I get NetFlix for $6.00 a month.<p>And then they devalued the perceived cost of software with the App Store. $0.99 for a game that took tens of thousands of hours of work to complete. Those greedy lazy programmers.<p>And finally, they came for the books. And I spent nearly a full month writing this book. And oh, if it doesn't make me furious that Amazon has the gall, and the temerity to allow people to read it for a fixed monthly subscription.<p>- Signed, a.n. author.