From Publishing Technology:

In just a few short years, subscription-based streaming services like Spotify and Netflix have gone from being tiny start-ups to companies that many believe hold the future of entertainment business in their hands. According to recent forecasts Netflix is on track to have over 45 million paying subscribers in the US alone by the end of 2013, while Spotify disclosed at the end of 2012 that its subscriber base now tops 6 million worldwide.

There is now a growing sense that what has worked for film, TV and music could also work for the book business. Consequently we’ve seen quite a few subscription-based start-ups appear over the past few months, vying to become the ‘Netflix’ or ‘Spotify’ for books.

. . . .

What most of them have in common is a core belief that readers will benefit from an ‘all you can eat’ model for consuming books, while publishers will be attracted to a service that delivers consistent subscription revenue. After all, it’s a payment model that has worked extremely well for journal publishers.

How such services can be structured so that they offer readers sufficient content to sign up, yet still deliver satisfactory revenue to publishers is a point that will no doubt be discussed at length in the coming year.

. . . .

2. Amazon Kindle FreeTime

This is another children-focused subscription service from Amazon itself, which launched in the US last year. An added value package for Amazon Prime subscribers the Free Time service costs from $4.99 per month (in addition to the Amazon Prime subscription) and gives the subscriber’s children infinite access to a selection of games, books and films on a Kindle Fire.

While this is an entertainment rather than books-focused service it is an interesting example of how one subscription can be used to pay for content provided in multiple formats. It also begs the question as to what other subscription services will start to diversify into books.

3. Blinkboxbooks

When UK supermarket chain Tesco acquired the ebook platform and store Mobcast in late 2012, there was feverish discussion as to what it would do with it. The retailer answered some of those questions on 4 March when it announced that Mobcast would be brought under the Blinkbox on-demand TV brand that Tesco also acquired in 2011, along with the music streaming service We7.

While there are no details as to what Blinkboxbooks will ultimately look like, the fact it’s being positioned as part of a well-known streaming services suggests that Tesco will pursue a subscription model to some extent. It will certainly be interesting to see what the new venture’s MD, Gavin Sathianathan, who joins from Facebook, has planned, and how he will translate Tesco’s might in the physical book sales market into the online space.

Link to the rest at Publishing Technology and thanks to L for the tip.

From MediaShift:

The Toronto Star is testing the e-book market with a dedicated subscription model. Launched in November 2012, Star Dispatches is the brainchild of the Toronto Star’s marketing department. The Star already has more than 20 titles of long-form journalism to choose from — ranging from investigations, in-depth health reporting, special reports on events and more. It’s labeled as “a new perspective on a news story.” E-books are produced every week for subscribers at the price of $1 each.

. . . .

Sandy MacLeod, vice president of consumer marketing at the Toronto Star, said their market research showed it took an “incredible amount of marketing” to produce single-copy e-books that generally sold 100 to 300 downloads at $4.99 each. The math just didn’t work out to make a viable business case, he said.

“So we had the thought that, what if we turned this model around a little bit and turned it into a subscription model?”

. . . .

Subscribers are charged $4.33 plus taxes monthly and receive an email each week with a link to download the newest e-book.

. . . .

Any reporter in the Toronto Star’s newsroom can pitch to pen an e-book. While it has been mostly feature writers who have had books produced so far, there are titles coming from all genres soon, said Alison Uncles, editorial director for Star Dispatches. Reporters can work on the e-book while also managing their regular duties, but in some cases, up to three weeks of their schedules have been cleared for working exclusively on the e-book.

Link to the rest at MediaShift

From Paid Content:

Tim Waterstone, founder of the U.K.’s Waterstones bookstore chain, is involved in a new venture: Read Petite, a subscription site for long-form fiction and nonfiction. The site will be announced at the London Book Fair next week and will launch to the public in the fall.

. . . .

“We are genuinely trying to expand the reading market, and bring publishers together under our aegis to do something new. Up until now short-form writing has not really been economic to produce, but we think we can unleash it.”

Monthly subscription prices haven’t been set yet, but Waterstone tells the Guardian that they will likely be “a few pounds.”

Link to the rest at Paid Content and thanks to L for the tip.

From Paid Content:

Magazine publisher Future says its tablet magazines are earning it $1 million per month in gross revenue.

It is now selling 239,000 tablet magazines per month, led by T3 in the UK (30,000) and MacLife in the States (65,000), plus dozens of other mostly replica editions amongst its more than 100 tablet titles.

CEO Mark Wood says (via announcement):

“Around 90 percent of our digital edition sales are to new customers and 40 percent are outside our core UK and US markets.

More than 60 percent of new customers sign up for subscriptions and the renewal rate is running at over 60 percent.”

. . . .

Digital growth comes as print magazine sales dipped by 12.5 percent to 2.1 million and print subscriptions shrunk by 16 percent in the last year, while print advertising declined by 13 percent.

Link to the rest at Paid Content

From The Wall Street Journal:

From Alexandra Alter,

“It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.

From The Wall Street Journal:

In a move that further thins the line between book publishing and book retailing, Sourcebooks Inc., a leading independent publisher, is launching an online bookstore this week focused on its romance titles.

The publisher, based in Naperville, Ill, will offer a curated selection of its digital romance novels for a monthly fee at discoveranewlove.com. A kind of online readers club, members will be able to access some of Sourcebooks’ most popular romance writers, including Grace Burrowes and Catherine Mann.

. . . .

The move reflects a time when the struggle for market share has never been more intense as Amazon.com Inc., the country’s leading online book retailer and digital books seller, is ramping up its own publishing efforts. Amazon and Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation’s largest bookstore chain, also provide outlets for self-published authors whose works compete with mainstream publishers.

Dominique Raccah, the publisher of Sourcebooks, said the goal of the Web bookstore is “to provide a site for readers to discover new writers by talking to one another.” She is also looking for new ways to connect with customers while better understanding “how and why readers make their choices.”

. . . .

The site, expected to go live April 10, will offer six-month subscriptions for $9.99. In that period, members will be able to choose one book every month from a selection of four books. On average, Sourcebooks’s digital romance novels retail for about $6.99. Members can also buy discount additional titles from the publisher’s library of 150 romance writers.

“We don’t see this as a challenge to Amazon, but rather as an experiment,” said Ms. Raccah.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire) and thanks to Mary for the tip.

From Publishers Weekly:

F+W Media is launching a series of e-book subscription sites aimed at enthusiasts in particular niches beginning with the Artist’s Network eBooks Book Club. The art community subscription site, http://ebooks.artistsnetwork.com, features more than 100 full-color art instruction titles.

For a yearly subscription of $199, subscribers to the Artist’s Network will receive unlimited access to all titles for as long as they remain subscribers.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly and thanks to Abel for the tip.