The Advent of Netflix Like Book Apps Monthly Book Clubs: Scribd.com and OysterBooks.com
Like many college students I had encountered Scribd.com a few years ago as mostly a place where papers and sometimes illegal copies of PDF books were uploaded. On in the last days of April for some strange reason I ended up back on Scribd.com and found it changed. It had become what I had been hoping and praying to the book and literature Gods and Goddesses GoogleBooks would (as it was trying) to become but never did.
For a monthly fee at Scribd.com you can read any book in their collection. You get a free month to try it out. I did. I loved it I got to read books without buying them and being disappointed. Little did I know however in the Apple Platform on Download in Itunes (as well as like Scribd) you can read from any web browser.
I haven't had a chance to try oysterbooks.com yet.
But I have been trying Scribd out. I have found myself LOVING it actually. A lot of us bookworms are totally against the eradication of paper books. I was too. But thenI got the first Kindle Tablet in color as a gift. I always said in a haughty tone I'd never buy one of those E-readers that for 100 or often more have one functionality. Then I was given the first Kindle that did apps, had documents, email. A very low functioning Tablet? Yes. But the price wasn't bad. And my passion is reading and occasionally wasting time on stupid apps. So I backed down from my calls of injustice on this new technology and realized something. E-readers, were PC compatible with Apps on PCs and Macs. This means books become more accessible via the internet. That is actually a good and beautiful thing. So I fell in love with my Kindle.
At the start, there were still many books you couldn't get in Kindle format. But I still began a love affair with my Kindle. I even ended up buying the Kindle HD and I actually after that WON another Kindle HD from some contest being held I just entered. So my huband and I both had them then. My husband isn't much of a reader but the apps, are his time wasting favorites.
Between the first Kindle coming out that Xmas to the last week of April my Kindle PC app says I have purchased over 400 books. As time went on and the competition between the Nook and Kindle heated up ebooks became cheaper than new hardbacks. And about the same as paperbacks. The pay off, you got them instantly. My love affair with my Kindle has been wilting for a while now. First off, it doesn't keep the charge it says it does. I can't add memory or add docs with a flash. I'm constricted by Amazon. So I said,the next time I'm in the market for a tablet of any kind I'm going to get a different Android based tablet. Mostly for th extra functionality plus I could easily download the Kindle App and my books.
Then came Scribd. I found Scribd. And I though before I looked it over it wouldn't have any worthwhile books. I mean this was the dream GoogleBooks was trying to put together but publishers and the like cried and bitched as if was the worst thing to ever happen in publishing. Then I looked around on the book list and saw that a very significant portion of the books I bough over the past few years and even recently, were on offer right there for a monthly fee on scribd. That was it. I was getting a new Tablet when the time came for sure. Scribd had apps but I didn't see any for Kindle. But then about a week ago, I found one for Kindle. Okay! I thought I suppose hope springs eternal. The app pretty much sucks. Every book I try to read comes up blank so I end up using the web feature on the kindle to do what I should do with the app. And I did realize a few things I missed in reading on Scribd from Kindle. I love highlighting passages in diffrent colors (blush) and posting them on Facebook and/or Twitter. I'm a book geek like that.
But you just can't beat the price for a library of books. And I searched Google to see if any other of these type of 'book clubs' existed. At the time I didn't get any results. But I stil thought it was spectactular. Then a few hours ago I found Oysterbooks.com which seem to be only for Apple products on the App level. However, work in browser form for those of us with PC laptops and probably web android features.
I haven't had time to fully investigate my equally free month with Oysterbooks.com quite yet which means I will be updating this. Is one better than the other? Are they the same? Scribd claims to have over 400,000 books on offer. Oysterbooks.com claims 500,000. Well you know they may be the same books. Or some that I couldn't find but searched for on Scribd might be on OysterBooks. I'm going to find out. I am definitely a fan of Android. So that throws a wrench off the bat in my OysterBooks ambitions. But hopefully they will as they grow to get a wider audience adjust and maybe, just maybe blow me away so much that it won't matter anyway. I can use the web feaure on my kindle and whatever tablet I get if decide t keep OysterBooks.com. We'll just have to see if they have on offer a different selection of books. And if they are different in other ways. I will update my findings after a month. Only because I have been using Scribd a month and it seems fair to use Oysterbooks that same length of time before coming up with any judgements.
