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And another one bites the dust--Oyster is folding.
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Kim
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Sep 26, 2015 10:06AM
Can honestly say I've never heard of them until now.
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I'm afraid I'd never heard of them either. If people haven't heard of them it might explain why they're closing
Oyster was a complete miss for me. Generally, the subscription model is of no use with access to digital public library and ebook discounts. Specifically, oyster never supported epub based ereaders. Since I started out with Sony and moved to Kobo, there was no way this would work for me.
Bought by Google. Let the consolidation begin.
Oyster was a companion outlet at Smashwords like Scribd. We still have the latter, I guess. I wonder what Google plans to do with Oyster? Is this just a way to eliminate Google's competition?r/Steve
I had heard of Oyster, but to be honest, I'm not surprised it didn't last. I looked into it when it first came out, but it didn't seem worth it to me. I wasn't familiar with much of their catalog, and at the time, it was only available for Apple devices, which I didn't have. Plus, I have no interest in paying a monthly subscription fee to read books that I don't get to keep. If I'm not interested in keeping the book, I'll just go to the library. Even Kindle Unlimited hasn't tempted me, because looking through the offerings, I either already own or have read them, or haven't heard of it. I'm a pretty willing reader, but I can only take so much self-pubbed/untested writing before my brain starts to melt... so... that model was probably never going to appeal to me.
@ Becky, I don't think of Oyster, Scribd, Library Thing, etc as only for indies. I suppose Unlimited is. I'm with you on the ebook borrowing, at least for indies: my own ebooks are quality products for a reasonable price, and I won't pay more than $5 for an ebook now, but, by the same token, I want it on my Kindle in case I review the book, so I'd rather buy.@ Ken, I agree, but I'd put it in the reader's world instead (I'm first and foremost an avid reader): we need to maintain our options, not limit them. Pbook or ebook? Let's keep them both. Indie or traditionally published? Let's keep them both. Bought or borrowed? Let's have them both.
r/Steve
No, it's not only indies, but there's a minority of bestsellers that I would be interested in paying a subscription fee to read. And the indies that are actually worth reading are even more rare. In my experience... very, very few.
I was very familiar with Oyster but I never used it in favor of Scribd.It's no surprise that book rental programs aren't doing well. I did a trial of Scribd months ago and discovered that most subscription models don't really have the items voracious readers are looking for:
- Most of these companies have little TradPub offerings.
- Most of these companies have very few new releases
- If it's popular, it's probably not there.
Scribd did a little better than most because it went after Romance readers. At first. But they dramatically cut their romance offerings when they discovered that romance readers are THE SHARKS of the reading world. Stupid. They did no real market research. Romance readers almost killed them so they cut romance. Then their membership dropped cause they lost content.
After Romance, Genre works are the next most important (numbers wise). This means that the quality and quantity of genre books available will be almost squat.
The biggest issues for these types of companies is that they are trying to function based on the gym-membership model: The light users who hardly read anything pay for the heavy (daily) users. This...doesn't work with readers - especially since most light readers would have no interest in paying for this program and most heavy readers will either kill the program OR jump ship because the content isn't varied enough.
MrsJoseph wrote: "The biggest issues for these types of companies is that they are trying to function based on the gym-membership model: The light users who hardly read anything pay for the heavy (daily) users. This...doesn't work with readers - especially since most light readers would have no interest in paying for this program and most heavy readers will either kill the program OR jump ship because the content isn't varied enough."Which is exactly why I blame Scribd rather than Romance readers for the troubles Scribd got into. When it became obvious that their business model wasn't working, they chose to cut off the supply for their biggest audience, rather than changing their business model to something workable (whatever that might have been).
I don't think they understood the market well enough. Unfortunately, they've still not owned up to their error and chose instead to blame their subscribers for the issue.
Micah wrote: "Which is exactly why I blame Scribd rather than Romance readers for the troubles Scribd got into. When it became obvious that their business model wasn't working, they chose to cut off the supply for their biggest audience, rather than changing their business model to something workable (whatever that might have been).I don't think they understood the market well enough. Unfortunately, they've still not owned up to their error and chose instead to blame their subscribers for the issue. "
Oh, I agree. Anyone who takes more than 15 mins to research would have known that Romance readers read in bulk.
I knew a lot of people who left scribd when Scribd dropped the romance offerings. A lot of them went to Amazon Kindle Unlimited but I personally avoid KU.
I just don't really understand the book rental model in general, especially since there are libraries where I can borrow a book for free. Maybe they won't have the same selection of indy ebooks, but they will have the popular titles I'm more interested in anyway... eventually. With a waiting list. But still... free. *Shrug*
Becky wrote: "I just don't really understand the book rental model..."It's all about instant access and instant gratification. Readers who consume a LOT of books (I know people for whom reading is their only activity outside of work) often times are people who read across many genres. There simply aren't enough best sellers to keep them going. They will read just about anything by anybody. For them, subscription services are a hassle free way to get their fix. Finished your current read? BOOM, within a few seconds you've got a new book up and going.
But me? I'd never subscribe. I haven't even convinced myself to subscribe to cable TV or smartphone services yet.
Becky wrote: "I just don't really understand the book rental model in general, especially since there are libraries where I can borrow a book for free. Maybe they won't have the same selection of indy ebooks, bu..."I just wanted to see what I had access to. Discoverablity is important, too. I'm a moody reader and I often want to feed myself whatever my chosen mood is until I'm sick of it. These pay-for-play lending libraries were supposed to help with book discoverablity.
They don't. http://bookslifewine.com/p-scribd-fin...
Libraries give you access to the most diverse works: you get best sellers, old works, new works, audio, ebooks, etc. Libraries are the best, IMO.
But. Libraries don't offer it all. If you want to read SPA works, 99.99% of them are not in libraries. This also includes a lot of TradPub romance works.
Romance and Libraries are awkward sometimes because Romance has the largest output. Some romance authors put out more than 5+ books a year - with the prices being charged to libraries - there's no way a library could get them all.
Then there's the geographical issues: some libraries are super small with a lack of funding = a lack of content.
Maybe in that case, these services would do better to specialize by genre or maybe offer tiered subscription pricing or something. Or maybe both. Romance genre, plus 5 books a month = X / SF&F + 5 books a month = Y... etc.
OR, make it a bucket pay-what-you-use system, like Ting does for phone service. They tier their pricing: 1-100 minutes of calls = X price for the month; 101-999 = Y price, etc. (Same with texts and data.) You pay for what you use, plus taxes, and a line fee of $6/month.
Maybe a better model would be something like that... Membership fee of $1/month, and then if you read 1-3 books a month, you pay X, 4-7 and you pay Y, 8-12 = Z, 13-18 = A, etc.
That way, the people who read more pay a little more, but it's still reasonable for what they're getting, and people who don't read as much don't feel shafted. Win/win.
Ken wrote: "Lucky for me, the libraries in my state belong to a state-wide organization that most counties participate in. You can put a hold on any book in the state, and have it shipped to your local library to borrow. I recently managed to find and read all of Asimov's Foundation books through the small, local library, which had only one on its shelves. ."I'm pretty lucky that my library system does this as well. I LOVE it because my local library sucks - but the county/state is amazing.
I know a lot of people who just don't have these options. There used to be options but now...
You used to be able to get a free membership to the Philadelphia Free Library but that has changed to $50 a year. Singapore used to have a free library, too. I wasn't able to get a card before that was shut down. :(
@ Mrs.Joseph, Your comments about romance novel readers and Scribd reminded me of when they opened up a smorgasburg (sp?) in my old college town. The football team and other jocks started going there because it was all you could eat. They went bankrupt in about six months.@ Becky, I'm sorry you've had such bad luck with indie writers. I've read and reviewed some really good books written by them, and the price is right. I'm the first one to say that slapping a book together without proper editing, cover, and good formatting can really harm the chances for a good sci-fi yarn to find readers.
@ All, I keep donating pbook copies to my local libraries and have donated to them on the West Coast too. Unfortunately, my local librarians have no mechanism for me to donate ebooks. Library books, though, are the only pbooks I'll read--my budget can't handle expensive pbooks. :-( Expensive ebooks either, for that matter.
r/Steve
Steven wrote: "Becky, I'm sorry you've had such bad luck with indie writers. I've read and reviewed some really good books written by them, and the price is right. I'm the first one to say that slapping a book together without proper editing, cover, and good formatting can really harm the chances for a good sci-fi yarn to find readers."I've gotten into some intense discussions with a friend of mine who is staunchly anti-self-publishing, at least when it comes to her reading material, and I've defended it just on principle (it's not all bad, you just have to find the good stuff, etc)... but the more I read of it, the more I come around to her way of thinking. I can be critical, and I don't give a book a pass for having a good story while the writing is subpar. Or vice-versa.
As the lady says: Ain't nobody got time fo' dat.
So... these days, I'm in the "It's not for me" camp. I don't think I'm missing much... and if I am, I can console myself with the knowledge that I'll never read every great traditionally pubbed book, either. But life is too short to read stuff I know I probably won't like because of a lack of skill or support (meaning editors, etc) - I'd rather take the risk on not liking the story, or the plot, or the characters, instead of getting bogged down in homophone hell or Commageddon or something.
@ Becky, I respect your opinion and am doubly sorry for what you might be missing. Just an FYI: I review many ebooks, and I've found just as many glitches in traditionally published books, especially those where a big publisher decides to release a hastily produced ebook to extend the life of a bestseller. I'll usually warn readers of editing lapses, whether in a traditionally published or indie published ebook.I also have a problem seeing a pbook for $14.99 and the corresponding ebook for $12.99, for example. Producing an ebook costs far less than the pbook (I know, because I've done both), so that means the publisher is gouging the reading public (or it's an indie writer with no idea about current price points).
One final point and I'll shut up: NO ONE can read everything. EVERYONE is selective in their reading choices. You do make "time fo' dat." Perhaps narrowing it down to traditionally published books will make that task easier, but eventually you will be limiting yourself to the old, tired, formulaic voices and missing out on new, creative ones, because traditional publishers no longer take chances with the latter.
But that's your choice. It's all about choices. I love the current environment because the readers' number of choices is maximized.
r/Steve
PS. Is your friend a traditionally published author? A member of Authors Guild? Then I feel sorry for her too.
I tend to side more with Becky on this one, Steve, though I feel there should be a distinction made between traditional Big 6, traditional indie, and self-publishing.The editorial quality of the first two is equivalent (meaning there are errors in grammar, punctuation, and formatting on occasion) while the editorial quality of the latter runs from excellent to abysmal.
I find an equally wide range of quality in writing for ALL THREE types of publishing. Some of the Big 6 writers are so bad at constructing prose, reading them feels like chewing tinfoil. Having said that, I find self-published to be the biggest hit-or-miss category, with prose ranging from eloquent to elementary, and storylines that have no filter for quality or good taste. (I submit in evidence Dino-porn novellas featuring human females copulating with dinosaurs.)
So when taking a chance on what to read, I spend more time focusing on traditional Big 6 and traditional indie than I do on self-published, assuming (perhaps erroneously) that someone has applied a quality filter to the author's raw output.
Steven wrote: "@ Becky, I respect your opinion and am doubly sorry for what you might be missing. Just an FYI: I review many ebooks, and I've found just as many glitches in traditionally published books, especia..."Steven, I understand what you are trying to say but...
...your commentary makes me feel that you've yet to actually wade into the slush pile that is SPA works.
I read a lot more SPA works that Becky but I shy away from them, too. Why? The editing is often terrible. Horrible. Atrocious. And hilarious.
Take the book I just finished for example. Almost every sentence was a run-on and it's own paragraph. I started calling them "para-sentences." There were words like "his," "he," and "it" in place of words like "the," "this" and "thing." I found the word "coding" where the author meant "couldn't."
I ended up playing a game with it: "Figure out the right word!" and that's the only way I finished the extremely short book. There was one sentence I couldn't figure out so I lost the game.
Most people would ave chucked the book at the wall instead of playing a game to finish it.
Don't feel sorry for me or my friend, Steven, because that comes across as very condescending. Your reading choices aren't any more "right" than mine or my friend's, they're just yours. My friend and I are not suffering from a lack of interesting reading material. You are an author, and you seem to come at this process from a different place than my friend and I do (no, she is not a writer, just someone with very high standards). I am pretty critical myself, and the story must be very good to get a pass on grammatical, punctuation, spelling, and composition errors. I've seen errors in traditionally published books, of course, but the quantity is pretty low compared to self pubbed - in my experience, if there are errors in these, there are TONS of errors - some with so many that it's a struggle to actually read the book.
I'm willing to try new and different things, and in fact, I prefer NOT to know anything about a book going in so as to keep the experience as pure as possible. I don't actually check the publisher, so in my case I am not going out of my way to rule out self-pubbed work. (Though often the cover design indicates it anyway.) But if it looks like a professional work, I'll give it a shot. If I get burned on the writing inside... it happens. In fact, it just did recently.
I disagree with your statement: "Perhaps narrowing it down to traditionally published books will make that task easier, but eventually you will be limiting yourself to the old, tired, formulaic voices and missing out on new, creative ones, because traditional publishers no longer take chances with the latter."
Publishing is a business, not a charity. It makes perfect sense to me that they'd be selective and choose to publish what they hope will be successful. I'm no expert on the publishing industry, but in my mind, it would make sense that the rise of self-publishing would actually allow traditional publishers to be MORE selective in what they pick up. They can wait for a book to find an audience and then swoop in for the deal. Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria series was indy published and then picked up by a publisher after it found its audience. The Martian is another one. Wool. And so on.
I like that there are a lot of options for people as well, and I am not saying that there should not be self-published work... just that I would not pay for a subscription to read it because I would likely not enjoy the majority of it.
@ Scott, I love "chewing tinfoil"! Can I use it? And dino-porn novels? OMG, how do they pull off what you describe? I'm not sure what the difference is between your three categories. By "traditional indie," do you mean independent publisher, i.e. not one of the Big 5 (two merged)? There are traditionally published writers and indie or self-published writers--just two categories. Publishers are harder to pigeon-hole. What about the ebook publisher who hands out traditional contracts but only sells ebooks online? Even Amazon does that. There's a lot going on in the publishing world right now.@ Mrs.Joseph, Yep, there are indie writers who commit the sins you talk about. As a reviewer, I slam anyone for that, because I chose to review that book for some reason, but I can't get past the failures. In other words, I was thoroughly disappointed because these authors give the good indies a bad name, so shame on them.
But let's move past editing errors to other aspects of writing mechanics--plot, setting, characterization, etc. The digital revolution allows anyone to publish a book. That doesn't mean everyone should. I might understand the theory behind running a vineyard and producing a quality wine, but that doesn't mean I can do it in practice. It also doesn't mean that, as a consumer, I should forego trying new wines. Several years ago, I discovered Australian wine. As a native Californian, I'm a wee bit biased--I'll admit it (not uniformly good either, by any measure). But now certain Australian wines are common in our household. This enjoyment wouldn't be possible if I didn't try them. The moral of the tale: try something new. You might find some new authors you like, be they traditionally published or indie.
r/Steve
Steven wrote: "@ Mrs.Joseph, Yep, there are indie writers who commit the sins you talk about. As a reviewer, I slam anyone for that, because I chose to review that book for some reason, but I can't get past the failures. In other words, I was thoroughly disappointed because these authors give the good indies a bad name, so shame on them.But let's move past editing errors to other aspects of writing mechanics--plot, setting, characterization, etc. The digital revolution allows anyone to publish a book. That doesn't mean everyone should. I might understand the theory behind running a vineyard and producing a quality wine, but that doesn't mean I can do it in practice. It also doesn't mean that, as a consumer, I should forego trying new wines. Several years ago, I discovered Australian wine. As a native Californian, I'm a wee bit biased--I'll admit it (not uniformly good either, by any measure). But now certain Australian wines are common in our household. This enjoyment wouldn't be possible if I didn't try them. The moral of the tale: try something new. You might find some new authors you like, be they traditionally published or indie."
The whole thing was pretty atrocious, to be honest. You really can't preach to me about reading and discoverability - I've been reading since I could barely walk.
I will NEVER move past editing errors. Those errors make the book impossible to read. IMPOSSIBLE. I just told you that I had to figure out words in a book due to editing and you say "lets move past editing errors????!' Seriously??
I don't give a shit how great the plot, setting or characterization is. If the editing sucks and gives me a headache, I'm ditching it. What do I care about plot when the author was so lazy as to give me some un-proofed piece of crap??
If I read 10 SPA books, 9 of them are usually crap. Sorry, I'll pass. 99.99% of the SPA books I've read come recommended by someone else. I avoid un-reviewed SPA works unless I know I like the author (Courtney Milan, Ilona Andrews, etc).
There are close to 1 million traditionally published books released in the US alone each year. Why should I force myself to read in the slush pile when I have almost 1 million books to chose from that are NOT from the slush pile?
@Steve. You may have chewing tinfoil free of charge, since I probably stole it from somebody else.I suppose I use the term 'traditional indie' to mean those independent small presses that have flourished like weeds in a garden. Some have grown up to display pretty flowers while others have choked the life out of the more attractive plants. I can live with the definitions as you've outlined.
Forgot to mention: I'm the kind of person that HAS TO KNOW so I snuck a peek inside "Taken by a Velociraptor" and discovered that once seen, it can't be unseen. Don't go there.
Scott wrote: "Forgot to mention: I'm the kind of person that HAS TO KNOW so I snuck a peek inside "Taken by a Velociraptor" and discovered that once seen, it can't be unseen. Don't go there."LOL
I'm in agreement with Becky and MrsJoseph on this one. Running this place I get a lot of free books thrown at me in the hopes that we'll use one as Book of the Month. Early on I tried reading them but they were abysmal. There's a reason we don't let authors nominate their own work. As for your assertion that SPA books have a wider range of plots and stories I see that go in one of two ways. Either so far from the norm that they make no sense whatsoever, or extremely cliche as they are trying to emulate successful novels. And I see far more of the second type than the first.
@ Scott, Thanks for the "chewing tinfoil." I might have to modify it to "chewing aluminum wrap." My wife always tells me tinfoil is an old-fashioned term, but it's part of my upbringing. :-)@ Becky, Yep, it's a business. Is that why Harper Lee's original MS for Mockingbird, which was rejected, was published? Just to make money? Her editor told her to do a rewrite, and the world got Mockingbird, yet that Big Five publisher wants to make a few more bucks off her good name again. BTW, good indies use editors and proofreaders too. I reviewed an ebook recently where I found errors and said so; the author fired her editor. It's a business!
@ Mrs.Joseph, You have the mistaken impression that every indie book would have ended up in the slush pile. Do you understand that some indies started out as traditionally published authors and changed to indie? As Becky says, it's a business, and these authors saw 70% royalties as a lot more attractive than the 10 to 15% traditional publishers offer, not to mention the egregious terms of the latter's contracts. People who say they've been reading a long time haven't been writing a long time. They don't know the business and how it has changed for the better for both readers and writers (but probably not for all the bloated bureaucracy in between).
I'm bailing out of this thread. Suddenly it's become as polarized as the U.S. Congress and way off topic. I'll sign off echoing a previous sentiment, though: losing Oyster means readers and writers have fewer options. That's never a good thing. Hopefully Google does something with it.
r/Steve
Scott wrote: "I suppose I use the term 'traditional indie' to mean those independent small presses that have flourished like weeds in a garden. Some have grown up to display pretty flowers while others have choked the life out of the more attractive plants. I can live with the definitions as you've outlined. "I try no to conflate "indie" with "self published" because they aren't.
Sadly, a lot of SPAs are now going into Vanity publishing so that they don't look like SPAs. When I post reviews on my blog, part of the information I collect is the publisher. You can't even imagine the huge variety of vanity publishers there are out there. Of course, they never SAY they are Vanity but you can always tell - especially when the only books published are by that same author.
To ask a reader to "move past editing errors" does not speak well.
All in all I still cannot see why a subscription model will work with books.I assume that they're trying to lift it from the music industry and it's the answer to a lot of the music sites, pay so much and just stream away.
I suspect there are a couple of problems with that, firstly you can 'consume' a lot of music while doing something else. It's a bit difficult reading a book while you jog :-)
Also in the UK at least it appears that bands are now regarding albums as adverts for the tour and the live performance is where most of them will make most of their money. Streaming doesn't pay particularly well.
As for instant gratification, there are so many books, dirt cheap, on Amazon, with the 'look inside' feature there's no real problem with getting the next ebook. You'll probably be able to pick up two for the price of a coffee and because of 'look inside' you can winnow out any you have problems with.
So it it's written in English (which some people have trouble with) or the first three or four pages don't grab you, you just don't download it
