Oyster App: Unlimited Books For $9.95 Per Month


The Oyster app offers unlimited books for less than $10 per month. The application currently offers a library of 100,000 e-books. Oyster is being compared to Netflix and Spotify, which offer unlimited monthly subscriptions to movies and music.

Oyster is already available for iPhone. The iPad app will be introduced later this fall.

The application is designed to be intuitive and simple to use. As reported by Wired, The application’s algorithm tracks readers’ habits and preferences, recommending future books.

Oyster also includes a social function, allowing users to share titles, lists, and reviews with other readers. The social function includes a privacy setting, which prevents the app from sharing certain titles.

Creator Willem Van Lancker says Oyster offers a completely digital reading experience. In his opinion “e-books have stagnated a bit.”

The digital platform includes features that e-readers simply do not have.

Oyster app users will notice the page-turn animations, and numerous ways to customize their reading experience. Users have the option of choosing between several different themes, typesets, lighting levels, and background textures.

The application includes several features that e-reader fans appreciate. The pages are numbered and the text can be highlighted and searched. As reported by Los Angeles Times, the application also estimates how much time the user will need to finish a chapter, or the entire book.

Van Lancker says that the Oyster app was developed to integrate the things people love about physical books, with the convenience of technology.

For $9.95 per month users can read as many books as they wish.

Oyster has some fantastic features. However, they are still working on growing their library. Apple boasts a library of 1.8 million titles, and Amazon has over 2 million.

The price is certainly tempting, and the features are great. However, Oyster will have a difficult time competing with Apple and Amazon’s libraries.

As the Oyster app moves forward, Van Lancker and his colleagues hope to form partnerships to offer more titles.

[Image via Flickr]

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