The all-you-can-eat Netflix model of media consumption is now available for ebooks.Oyster, a year-old Flatiron-district startup with $3 million in backing, launched its iPhone e-reading application and subscription service on Thursday. For now, the service is only available by invitation (users can request an invite on Oyster's website or on the downloaded app.) Users will pay $10 a month for unlimited reading. Oyster offers more than 100,000 titles from hundreds of publishers.An iPad app will launch sometime in the fall, but a spokeswoman said Oyster has no immediate plans to expand beyond iOS.The launch is limited in other ways, too. Just one of the so-called Big Five New York houses is participating, and that publisher, HarperCollins, has only made available a small number of its backlist titles. Other titles come from digital-only houses like Open Road and RosettaBooks, smaller players like Houghton Mifflin and indies like Melville House.Though a subscriber can read popular titles like Life of Pi and The Color Purple, and esoteric hits like the novels of Philip K. Dick, new books other than reference titles are hard, if not impossible, to find.A spokeswoman for Oyster, however, said the company has many titles that are less than a year old, and typically secures new ones 90 to 120 days after their release.Oyster's main innovation is its subscription model—an unconventional approach to e-reading that its founders hope will prove lucrative for publishers and authors by... Continue reading at 'Crains New York'
[ Crains New York | 2013-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mabel Normand, who came to fame at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, was one of the top comedy stars of the silent era. Besides appearing in several shorts with Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle, Normand also wrote, produced and directed these slapstick comedies. She's the subject of "Mabel and... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2014-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In the six months since its debut, the $14 million Oyster ebook subscription platform has yet to take off. What's lacking? What could be improved? We advise. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The book business is merging into the magazine business as more publishers sell literature via subscription to highly targeted clusters of readers. High-profile literary studio Plympton is leading the charge with its $5-a-month iOS service Rooster. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2014-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Got a kid with an insatiable appetite for books? You may want to sign up for Oyster, then. The subscription ebook service has just launched a children's section, giving young readers all the titles they can handle. The deal also brings Disney... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2014-02-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We are now living in a history glut; the Internet has muddled the line between past and present. As our past gets closer and closer to the present and the line separating our now from our then dissolves, we're approaching an odd sort of asymptote. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2014-02-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Mark Coker of Smashwords, which recently inked a major content deal with Scribd, weighs in on how the all-you-can-read model changes the way we read, how authors make creative choices, and how everyone gets paid.Is a "Netflix for ebooks" nearing viability? Yesterday, Smashwords, the largest... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-12-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Oyster, the ebook subscription service launched this year, has reached a deal with the Perseus Books Group to launch a pilot program offering 100 Perseus titles through the Oyster subscription catalog Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-12-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Armed with a new name, five employees and $5.3 million in financing, Wilmington-based e-Book subscription service Entitle is open for business this week. Founder Bryan Batten, who left a career in pharma sales to jump off the startup ledge, calls the service “a hybrid of Netflix and a book... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2013-12-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Oyster and Scribd let you read an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee, but is there enough content to make it worth it? Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2013-10-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After launching last month for the iPhone, Oyster, a Netflix-like app for reading ebooks, is available for the iPad. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-10-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Spotify did it for music. Netflix did it for movies. And now, Trip Adler and Scribd are doing it for books. The 29-year-old entrepreneur and his six-year-old San Francisco startup just unveiled an online subscription service that gives you unlimited access to a large library of digital books for... Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2013-10-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Warehouse clubs, mass merchandisers, and other big-box retailers remain important to publishers because they not only sell books, they are places where books can be discovered. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Whether for movies, music, or magazines, the all–access model has proven it's here to stay. Now, what Spotify has done for music and Netflix has done for movies, a startup called Oyster is trying to do for that most analog of relics: the book. The basic premise of Oyster's invite–only iPhone... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2013-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Netflix did it with movies. Spotify did it with music. And now a New York start-up hopes to do the same with ebooks. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-09-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Can a Spotify-like service created by ex-Googlers shake up the publishing industry? Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2013-09-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sproutkin, a new web startup, is launching a children's book subscription service based on the Netflix model. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Oyster, a fledgling mobile service for Spotify-style on-demand books, has raised $3 million in funding led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Oyster, which is still a work in progress, will let users of its mobile app access, discover, and read an ever-growing range of titles and genres, all on... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Waterstones has announced former Piccadilly store manager Rik McShane as its new head of books at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jon Appleton has been appointed to the newly-created post of editorial director for fiction at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 14/11/2011 - 08:12 Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English (Bloomsbury) has made the shortlist of the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award, equaling its achievement on the Man Booker Prize this year, with Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-11-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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