\nOnline retailer Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN<\/span>: News ) is close to launching a digital book library and is in talks with book publishers, according to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The library will enable customers to access a digitized content by paying an annual subscription fee, similar to the service provided by Netflix, Inc. (NFLX<\/span>). [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThe launch of the digital library by Amazon could also further harm the print media and could lower the cost of print books and the demand for them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Couple quick points: <\/p>\n
1) I am a shitty capitalist. Not that I’m the only person to have ever thought about this, but it seems like one of those things that a smarter, more money hungry sort of person would’ve been proposing to a venture capitalist\/Amazon a million months ago. <\/p>\n
2) I actually think these services are good for print media (and the music industry). The issue of why you read\/listen to what you read\/listen to, and how you stay within your prescribed comfort zone, is a topic much to large for this ephemeral blog post, but if there’s ever a situation where readers\/listeners are willing to “take a chance” on something out of the ordinary, it’s this sort of unlimited subscription model. Before Rhapsody (which I subscribed to for a decade<\/em> before shunning them in favor of the younger, sexier Spotify), I bought maybe 6 CDs a year, listened to music occasionally, and would pirate things I maybe thought sounded OK, but wasn’t necessarily sold on. Rhapsody changed everything. This past weekend, I listened to tracks from at least 30 artists I had never before heard of, discovering a few I liked, and a number that were just meh. From a user’s perspective, this sort of noodling is essentially free, since you pay $10\/month to check out any and everything you want. For presses like Open Letter, a service like this could be golden, since someone interested vaguely in international literature, but unwilling to spend $15 or even $9 on a book by an author with a strange name, would be able to start reading that book for a price that, within their mind at least, is basically $0. It’s like how you start watching strange shows on cable just because they’re there . . . There’s no risk in starting Museum of Eterna’s Novel<\/em> and finding out if you think it’s the “First Good Novel.”<\/p>\n
3) This service would convince me to buy an ereader. Not to replace my current book collecting obsession (on recent trip to New York I gave away 4 Open Letter books to reviewers and booksellers and bought 6 new titles), but to supplement it. There are things I don’t want to own, and books I’d like to just check out. It would be like a massive library right in your hand! <\/p>\n
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