It is with
great joy that we discuss the demise of Oyster’s subscription eBook service,
one akin to Netflix but for books.
Though I am saddened that their departure means one less competitor in
the book market – I hold no tears for the defeat of a buffet book service. The book industry cannot be sustained if
consumers heavily buy into such a program.
Many consumers did not buy into it, through that doesn’t mean they gave up on the
idea. Scribd, Amazon Kindle Unlimited,
and a few others offer the price-fixed monthly all-you-can-read deal. Here’s the question: why did Oyster fail?
·
Did
not enough people know about it?
·
Was
their selection of books weak?
·
Do
people favor a competitor?
Or do
consumers simply not care for such a service? Or, maybe Oyster had a lot of
customers and realized it can’t afford to pay royalties to cover all of these book
rentals?
Oyster
charged $9.95 per month and made over one million e-books available to be read
anytime, anywhere. Was $9.95 too
much? Has the market completely
collapsed that people won’t even part with 10 bucks to read a ton of books?
I’ve
written this many times over but I will say it again:
·
Books
have value – they aren’t commodities.
·
Books
should be sold individually and not limped into a monthly fee.
·
Book
prices for e-books should be similar to hat of print.
·
All
book prices must rise over time.
·
Book
giveaways help brand specific authors but hurt the industry overall.
Oyster
tried something new and presented competition for Amazon, the beast of the
industry. It failed and now we need to
celebrate and hope that consumers continue to reject the all-you-can-eat
steals. We need to go back to seeing
books as being important treasures that should be paid for, so the publishing
industry – publishers, authors, retailers, editors – can make a decent living
and afford to publish quality books.
A recent
study showed writer income is down and that the average writer would live below
the Federal Poverty Level if he or she depended solely on book income.
Oyster
reportedly failed due to not having the best book selection. Even though it had so many titles available,
it didn’t have the big best sellers or all of the new titles. It thought it
could package a bunch of titles and bowl people over with quantity. However, quality counts.
It remains
to be seen where the Oyster model heads in the publishing industry but score a
victory for the authors and publishers with the end of one retailer’s attempt
to diminish and devalue the craft of producing books.
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Brian
Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and
not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email
him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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