Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
I'd sign up, read every book I'm interested in in the first month or two....then cut off the service. That's what I do with all the tv streaming services.
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A lot of people do exactly that with KU.
It is factored into the service, just as most of the older streaming services factor in churning. In both worlds there are both churners and low-consumption subscribers. It is the same with gym subscriptions: not everybody uses it religiosly or bothers to cancel when they're not using it so it all averages out.
As things stand, the average across all subscribers on Scribd is in the 5-6 books per month range and KU is rumored to be about the same, which matches up with indie reports of average payouts of $1.80-$2.10 per full read. (That kind of payout is woefully inadequate to be split for everybody involved in tradpub but acceptable for Indies used to 70% of $3-5.)
"All you can eat" buffets work because not everybody consumes the same way. With books, there's a limit--eyeball hours--to how much a subscriber can consume and there are typically a lot more more moderate-consumers than voracious ones so it all averages out at the global level. People only have a fixed number of hours a week for reading and it will also vary according to season.
For big publishers putting out everything including top sellers won't pay but, given their massive catalogs, putting in a large subset--say older books with trickling sales--might. DC COMICS puts everything on their subscription service...a year after release.
It seems to be working.
Marvel simply puts everything but charges more. They seem quite happy.
Gaming subscriptions on XBOX and Playstation also seem to work, again by offering a large and varied but still limited catalog. Not everybody wants the absolute latest release.
So it isn't a given that a publisher-specific subscription service won't work given that the publisher can tweak what is offered, the number of checkouts, and tbe subscription price. Something like a service offering 6 checkouts for $20 a month might generate an average of $5 per full read and provide a positive cash flow.
With this particular rumor tbere is one word that needs clarifying: "streaming".
The proposed service might be for audiobooks and closer to Audible than to KU.
More info is needed.