2015 saw considerable changes and reorganization in the ebook subscription market. Here’s where we’ve been and where the market may be headed.
What happened to ebook subscriptions in 2015: One of the biggest and most well-publicized ebook subscription services, Oyster, closed its doors in the fall after being acquired by Google. Entitle, a lesser-known service, also closed.
Who’s left in the U.S. ebook subscription market? The biggest players are Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Scribd. Some believe that the current softness in ebook sales may be a result of the growth of KU, which costs $9.99/month for unlimited reading.
Do all of the major publishers offer their ebooks through these services? No. None of the Big Five publishers participate in KU—it is populated predominantly by small to midsize publishers and self-published authors. Scribd has participation from three of the Big Five: Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. The largest Big Five publisher, Penguin Random House, does not participate except for making some audiobook titles available.
What’s not often discussed but should be: Successful ebook subscription services already exist, but they’re in “verticals,” rather than targeted at a broad, general reading public. For example, Safari, the ebook subscription service started as part of O’Reilly Media, was founded in 2001 and is very successful in serving the tech industry, with many publishers participating. F+W (the corporate parent of Writer’s Digest) is another example of a vertical publisher that offers subscription-based products to its enthusiast communities.
What are the newest and most important developments? Keep an eye on new hybrid subscription services entering the market, such as DisneyLife and Playster, which offer a combination of ebooks, movies, and video games. Industry pundits often speculate that the biggest untapped market for ebook subscription services is the children’s market.
What about international ebook subscription services? The Spanish-based 24symbols offers hundreds of thousands of titles in ten different languages and costs $8.99 month. Early last year, 24symbols announced a partnership with Facebook to make a portion of the 24symbols library available for no charge through Facebook’s Internet.org program. Another service and competitor is Bookmate; it began by focusing on markets where ebooks are largely pirated, such as Russia. Finally, Mofibo, based in Denmark and charging 99 Danish kroner per month (about US$14), is also active in Sweden and plans to make a Dutch expansion soon. Mofibo has some Simon & Schuster participation and, more recently, the audiobook catalog of Penguin Random House UK. Part of its approach involves readily making immense amounts of reader-behavior data available to info-hungry publishers.
Bottom line: In the U.S. market, Scribd’s business model has shown signs of strain; they reduced availability of romance titles as well as audiobooks in 2015. We’ll be watching closely to see if they increase subscription prices or make other changes to their model, and if they recruit the last two of the Big Five to their service (unlikely, we suspect). KU is so far the service to beat—no easy task, given Amazon’s epic patience in waiting for profits.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
