Michael Kozlowski shares in
this article why he suspects e-book subscription sites is a deteriorating business. (I don't wholly agree though)
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One of the big trends of 2014 was the emergence of subscription services, where you pay a monthly fee and get access to thousands of e-books. Amazon Kindle Unlimited, Oyster, Entitle and Scribd have all gained the support of indie authors and publishers. How viable are their business models and will they continue to grow in 2015, or disappear entirely.
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All of these subscription sites never talk about their data and metrics, in terms of how much revenue they gain and or how many paid subscriptions they have. I do know from talking with many industry experts, is none of them, save Amazon is actually making enough money to stay operational. Instead, they are caught in a loop of constantly raiding venture capital in order to stay afloat. It leads me to belive that the average reader is happier buying books, one by one, than having access to an incomprehensible amount. It is far easier from a readers prospective to buy the titles that just came out, than to browse a huge selection of older titles via Scribd and Oyster.
Will these sites continue to be viable in 2015? I have a feeling at least one of these companies will go out of business. The public has not accepted this business model yet and major publishers do not distribute new titles to their platforms, which in turn does not appeal to your the average reader.
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