Slashdot Mirror
Ars Test Drives the "Netflix For Books"
Ars Technica reviewer Casey Johnston gives a mildly positive review to the Oyster book-rental app (and associated site), which intentionally tries to be for books what Netflix has become for movies: a low-price, subscription-based, data-sifting source of first resort. For $10 a month, users can read any of the books in Oyster's catalog (in the range of 100,000, and growing), and their reading habits are used to suggest new books of interest (with some bum steers, it seems, at present). It's iOS-only for now, with an Android version expected soon. I've only grudgingly moved more and more of my reading to tablets, but now am glad I have; still, I don't like the idea of having my books disappear if I don't pay a continuing subscription.
The added value that you're paying for comes from the recommendation system. I haven't tried it, since I don't have any iOS devices, but if it works well it could be worthwhile.
If you don't want to pay, there are still libraries, not to mention plenty of sites with free ebooks.
It's like a library, but we charge money for it.
Yes, but it is also like Netflix, so it will not have any book that you are actually interested in reading.