Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
No insult intended about your reading habits: I check out dailycheapreads.com and the Freebies forum here constantly. 
Shatzkin foresees thusly:
So he sees it evolving in a stepwise fashion, with the indies leading the way and the Agency 6 putting in some titles, probably genre fiction, first.If it catches fire,and (given the enthusiastic reaction to Baen, it likely will) , then there will be a rush to get in. |
1. Why do you think that this is like Baen? Baen offers a narrowly tailored genre (military sf) in which they are the dominant publisher. And AFAICT, Baen's success is not based on webscriptions (which are basically bundling arrangements); Baen's success is based on the sale of its books for decent prices with no DRM.
2. Why would indies do this? They can already charge whatever price they want for their books - is the subscription service going to be cheaper than .99c - $2.99?
3. And who would subscribe to an indie subscription service? Finding an indie you like requires going through a *lot* of chaff - paying for a subscription means your choice is limited.
4. I don't even see the value proposition for the mainstream publishers - they can already price their backlists as they want. And even if they priced backlists cheaper, subscribers would still have to pay full price for the newer copies - meaning that they are paying for the subscription and paying to buy other books.
5. I don't see the comparison to Amazon Prime, Kindles, or Nooks *at all*. In fact, I think that Shatzkin is just talking out of his [message redacted]. People like Amazon Prime because it gives you free two day delivery of anything from books to kitchen supplies to flatscreen TVs for $80/year. And next day (and sometimes same day) delivery for only $4. People like it because the value proposition is very clear (assuming one buys a lot from Amazon). This is in no way comparable to e-reader subscriptions.
People like the Kindle or the Nook because they believe that they are good products - and the lock in probably makes them a little more "patriotic" toward their reader.
But Shatzkin basically seems to be saying that because people like some things, they will like other, unrelated things. But that just doesn't follow.
6. Book subscription services have been around for a long time - since the 20's with the book of the month club. They are basically on life support now.
They were successful through the 70's or mid-80's because they offered large parts of population: (1) information about books that they may not have heard of; (2) access to books that they would not otherwise have access to (this was particularly true for me and the sf book club when I was a kid in the 70's); and (3) they offered a modest discount over publisher pricing.
These clubs are all but defunct now because they can't offer the value that they once had; IMO they were mostly killed off by big box stores, which offered vastly greater selections of books, particularly in genres - and which also offered cheaper prices than the book clubs did. Amazon is even better in this regard, of course. And while they can still offer advice about which book you might want to read, there are thousands of other sources on the internet that do the same thing.
Since I can now basically pick any book a la carte, I don't really see the advantage of locking myself into a subscription service that may have me spending money on books I may not want.