

Spotify for books - Turukawa
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21640357-authors-and-publishers-may-constrain-rise-e-book-subscriptions-spotify-books

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subpixel
It relies on annoyingly bad 3rd-party software (so it's not 'fun' like I
imagine a Spotify for books would be) but in the US you can get ebooks and
audiobooks from your local library.

My wife is a master at this, with library cards in three cities (where we
live, where we used to live, and where she grew up). She's literally never not
reading a book and she's got a deep bench of books-to-be-read all lined up.

Some libraries are actually going DIY:
[http://evoke.cvlsites.org/](http://evoke.cvlsites.org/)

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teddyh
“ _There should be a Netflix for books._ ”

“ _THE LIBRARY_ ”

[http://www.johnnywander.com/comics/24](http://www.johnnywander.com/comics/24)

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pbreit
The audio books situation is even more obviously pathetic, at least in
Audible's case. On Audible, for $15 a month you get to listen to, wait for it,
ONE book! Worse than that, each additional books costs. Worse still is that
prices appear to be at or near hard-back prices. And to add insult to injury,
this arrangement prevents the purchasing of books on iOS devices (I guess
because Amazon doesn't want to pay the 30%)!

Compare this to Hulu, Netflix and Spotify which offer unlimited consumption
(although with incomplete libraries) for around $10 per month.

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jurassic
I agree the normal prices are very high, but I've learned that the key to
Audible seems to be waiting for good sales to come around. They have members-
only daily deals and other sales fairly regularly. I bought several books
today because they are having a $6.95 members-only sale on a lot of popular
titles right now.

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EliRivers
Actual physical books are still pretty good; I can't speak for other
countries, but the county in the UK I live in (as is common in all UK
counties, I believe) will fetch books for you from anywhere else in the county
for fifty pence a pop, and if they haven't got it in county the inter-library
loans turn out to be astonishingly fast and remarkably good value.

I have requested some quite obtuse books over the past year and they've
managed them all so far; coming from the British Library in London, a
university maths library in Leeds, a university library in Exeter, somewhere I
couldn't even tell where it came from, and so on. If you like reading, and you
don't absolutely need the convenience of the book weighing very little and
being quite small (i.e. an eReader of some kind - I'm a fan of old Sony
models), physical books from a national library network are still really good.

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SwellJoe
I have had Kindle Unlimited for a few months. It saves me money most
months...I was reading about $20-$30 worth of books per month before, now I'm
down to about $15 (Unlimited has a good selection, but there are still
significant titles that aren't available via Unlimited). My local library
offers ebooks, and even has a pretty good selection, but everything I ever
want is always checked out and has a waiting list, so I end up buying a lot
more than borrowing. It's worrying that there may be a future in which people
need paid for subscriptions for a functional library (since I can foresee a
day not too far away where printed books are considered relics).

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bdcravens
O'Reilly's Safari Books Online has had this for years.

