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I will be interested to see whether the subscription services survive in the next few years, but I have serious doubts over its economical viability. The model works for movie/tv streaming but their customer base is orders of magnitude bigger. Largely because more people watch movies and tv than read a lot but also because the time required to complete a book is so much longer than watching a movie. Let's say a person has 50 hours of free time per month (just a number for demonstration, ppl!) and they spend all of that reading, and they are a fast reader, then they might read 5* books a month. But they could watch about 50 tv episodes or 25 movies in that time. So when they look at the value proposition many might feel that $7.99/month is a good deal for video streaming but not so much for books. And let's face it, how many people (outside of MR members) would read even 2 books per month? This is not to say that there won't be some people that will get value out of it - people who read a lot, have a good amount of leisure time and don't watch a lot of video (or don't have access to decent internet speeds), but whether there are *sufficient* such customers for the survival of the business is another matter. Of course a lot will also depend on the cost side, of which I know nothing, but I do feel that the revenue side is where they're going to make or break it.
* Back in the day I used to read books in a single session so I have a reasonable idea of how long it takes _me_ to finish a book. A lot of these were fantasies (Eddings, etc) so, as always, YMMV.
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