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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
The freedom allowed by "on demand reading" (as you call what we've described) is entirely at odds with the concept of a subscription-based service, in my opinion. Why the weird lumping?
I have zero interest in subscriptions OR NYT best sellers. The fact that someone doesn't care to curate a personal (not to mention local) digital library doesn't mean they're casual readers looking to be spoon fed whatever's popular this week. I have many dear, and obscure, favorite books that I'll probably never own ecopies of.
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Hardly weird. On demand is what subscription services are all about. Be able to read any book for $10 a month, or whatever the price. That's what you get with music subscription services. There are few songs I can't listen to via Apple Music. The limited select that Pandora has is what is eventually going to see them go under, IMPO
The issue that book subscription services have is that currently have a much more limited selection of books. For book subscription services to be more than a niche market, that will have to change.
A large percentage of readers are readers who stick mostly to either a specific genre (i.e. romance) or best seller type books, read them once then move on. Those of us with extensive digital libraries are the exception rather than the rule. If you don't want to have a digital library, then more power to you.
I also have a collection of old, obscure paper books. What's interesting is that quite a few of those somewhat obscure books are actually available as ebooks since they are in public domain. It's a big enough world and scanning devices are cheap enough that someone is going to scan most books given the chance.
It's the old obscure books that aren't in PD that you want see as ebooks.