If I had a dollar for every time I had seen a pitch for a subscription-based ebook platform, I would by now have launched my own.
And right about now, you could be forgiven for feeling that The Bookseller’s Philip Jones is the only guy who hasn’t launched a digital book subscription. In his lead editorial for today’s edition on the stands in London (page 3), Subscribe here now, he writes:
Once ubiquitously referred to as “Spotify for ebooks” and now “Netflix for ebooks,” its moment has come and, in retrospect, we should not be surprised. That trade publishers did not stop for subscription never mean subscription wouldn’t stop for them.
The whole issue of subscriptions for books has been brought so energetically into focus for us, as Amazon introduced its Kindle Unlimited (KU) programme a week ago. Time flies when you’re trying to keep up with the digital disruption.
Need something to read? If it only were all reference materials!
With that special charm all his own, Mike Shatzkin has titled his new commentary on the matter: Subscriptions are in the news this week.
And before you can say, Oh, really?, he brings up the Book Industry Study Group’s (BISG) extensive and remarkably timely 86-page survey report, Digital Books and the New Subscription Economy.
Our interview with one of the study’s two main writers, Ted Hill of THA Consulting, is here at The FutureBook for you: As served up by our headline, A buffet of digital book subscriptions, the biggest points of the survey results revolve around the groaning-board array of variables and models that can be found on the long table called “subscriptions.”
Shatzkin picks right up on this as he surveys the survey, himself…
Read the full article at TheFutureBook
Join us each Friday for a #FutureChat session with The Bookseller’s FutureBook community. We’ll be live on Twitter, at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Berlin, 3 p.m. GMT.
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
The FutureBook: #FutureChat: Can Subscriptions Pay Off For All Kinds Of Books?
Read the full post at: The Bookseller’s The FutureBook
