Subscription services compared

[fjtorres]

From Dear Author:
http://dearauthor.com/ebooks/review-...tion-services/

With the launch of Kindle Unlimited, we thought it was time to do a comparison and give our opinion as to which one is worth your $9 or $10 per month. We began talking about subscriptions back in 2009 and I followed that up in 2011. It’s amusing to look at the considerations that we discussed at the time. I was willing to pay $25 a month at the time! Not so much now.

At the end of the article there is a link to a downloadable pdf of recommended KU titles. Most being mystery/crime fiction.

[tubemonkey]

That chart has the wrong price for Oyster. It should read $9.95/ month.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Normally I find dearauthor to be a helpful and informative website. I have recently done 30 day trials of both Scribd and Oyster. There are several errors in the chart from my experience. It seems like they quickly prepared an article without much checking. It's worth reading the comments to the article.

I find the two services to be nearly identical. Oyster has a more polished and professional look. Both are lacking format options compared to Kindle apps. The format features in the table are not accurate.

I think the listing of publishers is misleading since some publishers are only listed at one service when they are available at the others too. The dearauthor site favors romance books and for that Scribd has a better selection. The only two authors that I like that I could find on Scribd but not Oyster were in the romance genre and published by Sourcebooks. On the other hand Oyster has Houghton Mifflin Harcourt books and so does Kindle Unlimited. They were the primary reason I selected Oyster over Scribd, and they are not even listed in the table.

[jscarbo]

For me, the most important difference is that only KU allows you to read on an e-ink device. Selection is important and both Scribd and Oyster offer at least some Big 5 titles. At the moment, Amazon has more books available but fewer bestsellers. To me, that's not very important. I've found the selection in KU to be more than sufficient for my reading tastes.

In short, I've never been tempted by Scribd or Oyster because I don't like reading on a tablet but KU is a great program for me.

[JohnRR]

Originally Posted by jscarbo

For me, the most important difference is that only KU allows you to read on an e-ink device. Selection is important and both Scribd and Oyster offer at least some Big 5 titles. At the moment, Amazon has more books available but fewer bestsellers. To me, that's not very important. I've found the selection in KU to be more than sufficient for my reading tastes.

In short, I've never been tempted by Scribd or Oyster because I don't like reading on a tablet but KU is a great program for me.

I also only read on an e-ink device as tablet/phones hurt my eyes if I use them to read. I think I will also join Kindle Unlimited when it is available internationally. Hopefully most books will be available internationally (not just some of them due to the contract). I am especially interested in the audiobooks which are very expensive now.