Instead of a book review this week, I thought I would share some information about book subscription services and a fun web site.

Netflix for books

You may have caught on to my love for free or nearly free books. I have talked about this in the past. (Free Reading, )  I have voiced some frustration with using the library eBook lending service.  I have now found out about three new services that might be of interest to you. Two of them are services that are much like Netflix. You sign up for the service and then can read as many books as you would like during the month. The third service is built more on the Audible model – you can download books and then actually own them.

Oyster

Oyster (https://www.oysterbooks.com/?gclid=COPFitjXgL0CFRJo7AodZRYAbA) is actually getting the most buzz that I can see. Partially because they now have surged ahead in having more children’s books available. They claim to have over 100,000 titles available. From what I have read, they have been more successful in getting publishers to sign up books with the service. A subscription to Oyster is $9.95 per month and there is a one month free trial. You can look through the library before you sign up. Here is the problem I see with Oyster currently. You can only use it on Apple products.  As of right now, this service is not available to you if you use a kindle or a nook as your e-reader. There is a place on the web site to sign up for notification when it is available for other platforms. Okay, I know I am a small fish but this seems like a rather large oversight. Yes, I have an iPad but even I am getting tired of so many reading platforms.

Scribd

Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/) is the other Netflix based book lending model. Scribed is $8.99 per month and works on both Apple and Android based platforms.  Scribd apparently does not have as much of a selection as Oyster but it also claims to have over 100,000 titles.  You can also look through the library before you sign up to see if it looks like there is enough to interest you.  Once again, your kindle and nook are not part of the Scribd experience.

Entitle

Entitle (https://www.entitlebooks.com/) is the third company in the subscription book market. As I said before, this service works by letting you download and keep the book. The price you pay per month depends on how many books a month that you want to download. The “most popular plan” is 2 eBooks per month for $9.99. There is a free trial for 7 days.  Entltle works on all the ebook platforms.  So, if you were buying and reading a book a month, this is a better deal – as long as the books you would want to read are available. You can look through the catalog and see if you think there are enough books that interest you.  My only quick thought on this is that when you buy books from Amazon or Barnes and Nobel, they keep the books for you in the cloud.  You don’t have to keep all your books on your reader. Since, over time, books can take up space on your reader, you might want to make sure these books can be off loaded to your account.

The Book Seer

I ran across this site today and thought I would share it with you. The site is The Book Seer. When you go to the site, it asks you for the name and author of a book that you like. It will then give you suggestions for other books that you might like.  I was surprised that I had actually read some of the suggested titles. I was surprised because they were not necessarily books that I would have connected to the original book. So you can try it for fun and see what it comes out with for you.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading!