‘Netflix for Books’ Calls It Quits

Oyster is a subscription based service which many have called the Netflix of books. Many customers subscribe to video subscription services; however, many people are still not willing to subscribe for similar e-book services. Some of us at AppAdvice have even jumped onto this gem of an app dubbed the “Netflix For Books”. “There are people in Google who worry about the book business, but there’s nobody at the top of Google who could justify spending more than a couple of minutes a month worrying about the book business”. Oyster subscribers will soon receive emails informing them about the imminent closure of the service.

Now that numerous team members from Oyster are expected to be headed to Google what does that mean?

It will be interesting to see Google entering the e-books subscription business. He said that the company believes that smartphones will be the primary reading device globally over the next ten years, and that the latest move would help to completely realize their vision for e-books. “The growth of Oyster to date demonstrates the huge demand in the market for a product with design and user experience at its core, offering a totally new way to discover and read books”.

As Oyster unwinds, Scribd and Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited are the last e-book subscription services remaining, though some in the tech world speculate that Google could try to get into the game.

If those words smack of optimism, it’s because cofounders Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown, and Willem Van Lancker have already taken their talents elsewhere. The company that raised about $17m (£11m, €15.2m) from Founders Fund, SV Angel, Founder Collective and Highland Capital Partners has not yet stated the reason for its decision to wind-up. This makes the deal an acquihire-buying out a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its staff.

While Oyster’s subscription seemed attractive, the service was unable to change traditional book sales.

Milliot says a competing service, Scribd, had to pull some of its romance titles because readers were devouring too many of them.