“In
music or film you might want 10,000 songs or films, but I don't think you want
10,000 books”
Hachette CEO Arnaud
Nourry commenting on the trend towards all-you-can-read offering by Amazon and
Oyster
Well
that didn't take long.
Oyster, the first Netflix of books, has
rallied back against its main foe Amazon by launching their own online e-book
Store as reported in the article “Oyster,
the Netflix of e-books, launching online store to take on Amazon”,
published April 8, 2015 5:00 by Nick Statt, CNET
News and “Oyster
Expands Its “Netflix For Books” Service With A New E-Book Store”, published
Apr 8, 2015 by Anthony Ha, Techcrunch.
 |
Apparently
Oyster has decided that the huge
book market, the majority of which Amazon owns in the USA and globally, is
worth going after.
So
they've decided to go into the sale of new releases and pre-orders for famous
and up and coming authors that are not a part of their contract with the Big
Publishers as explained in the article “The
'Netflix of Books' Just invaded Amazon's turf”, published 04.08.15 by DAVEY
ALBA, Wired.
This
world of books includes books in a variety of formats:
1.
Paperbacks
2.
Hardcovers
3.
e-books
4.
Audio Books
There
are currently five (5) major publishers in the US of A as follows:
1.
Hachette
2.
HarperCollins
3.
Macmillan
4.
Simon & Schuster
5.
Penguin Random House
Both
Amazon and Oyster have books from at least three (3) of the Big Five and competition
for new titles is tight. Since September 2013, Oyster has mainly been an Apple iPhone
App as noted in my blog article entitled
“Oyster
launchers US$9.95 Apple iPhone App for lending 100,000 book titles - Amazon
Kindle Lending just got competition”. More recently they've put out a Google
Android App that gives you unlimited access to book for US$9.95 per month.
They've
also had to contend with Amazon copying them by launch a similar service in
July 2014 for US$9.99 called Kindle Unlimited on their Amazon Kindle platform
where you can read-all-you-can as noted in my blog article entitled
“Amazon
launches US$9.99 Kindle Unlimited - Oyster and Scribd got served by Earth’s
Most Customer Centric Company but pay Indies Publishers better”.
So
why is Oyster going into selling
books when you can get some books for free? Like Music, it's all about
exclusive content partnerships.
Oyster’s Online e-book
Store - How exclusive New Releases and Pre-orders for Books puts Amazon in the
Oyster Farm
The
idea of an all-you-can-eat model for Books hasn't caught on, as most people
only read two (2) or so books at a time.
 |
That
models works with on-demand Video and Music i.e. streaming, which is becoming
very profitable for the Music Industry, based on stats from the RIAA for 2014
as noted in my blog
article entitled “@RIAA
says Streaming beating CD Sales - Why HD Audio Physical Digital Music comeback
progresses as Piracy is the Problem”.
In
fact, there is a demand for HD Audio Music and Videos.
So
much so that Jay Z and his Musical Artiste friend have pioneered a US$19.99 per
month service based on this type of Streaming content with playlists curated by
the same Music Artiste called Tidal HiFi as explained in my blog article
entitled “Jay
Z's US$19.99 Tidal HiFi launched with Artiste Backing - How HD Audio Quality
Music selected by Artiste will turn the Tide”.
There
is no equivalent demand for books or e-books, albeit e-readers like the Amazon
Kindle Paperwhite as described in my blog article
entitled “US$199
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite upgrades Hardware and Software - How to find free
Ebooks and e-Book Readers for Laptops and PC” do make reading convenient,
possibly spurring a return to reading books as the CNET Video below suggests.
Also
Oyster is an app that is restricted
to Smartphone and Tablets and must compete for the user's attention along with
every other form of content. So it’ll be interesting to see how this will work
out as Oyster prepares for the Catch
of the Day.
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