Comments on: Why We Need a Subscription Model for E-Books

By: Antonio

Antonio — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:21:07 +0000

I agree with Joana..I´m a Calculus teacher fom Spain and my students use INGEBOOK, (www.ingebook.com), an online ebook platform for science, engineering and architecture students. It has book suscriptions for around 0.95 / month, and a flat rate suscription from 20 euros/month
with more than 300 books, (plus the ones to come during the subscription period) ,something great as the book selection is not enclosed.

Personally, i find it very useful in order to prepare my lessons and exams since they offer a flat rate suscription to sections/ subjects as well. In my case , i´m subscribed to Mathemathics section with full accesibilty and more than 100 practice and theory books for 10 euros/month or 50euros/year.

I fully recommend it!

By: Kawieli

Kawieli — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:43:06 +0000

I live in Germany, I like to read books and I have an iPad. Fortunately for me there’s a service for that in Germany called Skoobe http://www.skoobe.de It’s just like spotify or netflix for books. Love it! It’s 10-15€ a month. It’s worthwhile the money for anyone who reads more than 1.0 books a month. I haven’t sined up for Spotify Premium yet but I will also do that very soon. Digital-media really is best served as subscription – no stress, just fun.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:40:22 +0000

As I see it, the problem with subscriptions is that it would put you into a scheme and the scheme would drive your book selection. Suppose there were a subscription service with lots of vampire and fantasy books, but not so much hard science fiction or biography. I might be tempted to get an available book over the one I really wanted that wasn’t there.

In short, I would prefer to pick my own choices rather than let available of a subscription decide. Of course, I could subscribe and buy outside the service, but at some point the service becomes moot. For example, I only used the Amazon Prime Lending library three or four times last year because that’s all I wanted, but some people will have a book each month because it’s there.

By: borax99 (Alain C.)

borax99 (Alain C.) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:17:27 +0000

I agree with Joanna’s post. The Zinio experience would be vastly more enjoyable if you could sign up for a buffet, say, for $ 29.95 a month or something similar. There are months when I read everything, but there are also months when I would rather just read one or two mags.

By: Autumn

Autumn — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:28:04 +0000

VigRoco has a good point. On the other hand, I’m a major fan of subscription services and subscribe to a variety of services – from radio to magazines to fitness websites to movie streaming sites. I really love the flexibility have having a wide variety of options available on demand, which is why the bundle-subscription model appeals to me. Would definitely consider such an ebook service if one came along.

Joanna, sounds like you’d love Next Issue (http://www.nextissue.com/) for magazine subscriptions. I think it’s US-only for now, though.

By: VigRoco

VigRoco — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:56:07 +0000

I think that the current cost per hour of entertainment for ebooks is too low for a subscription model to work. It works for Netflix because the cost of buying the individual shows or movies you would watch would be fairly expensive relative to the time you would get from it. On Amazon Instant, you can buy movies for around $10, so it works out to $5/hour on average. Most ebooks run around $8 and provide at least 6 hours of reading, reducing the cost to $1.33/hour. For an $8, Netflix-style subscription, a reader would have to read a lot more books to get the same value out of not owning their entertainment.