Do you think a Netflix-like subscription service would be a wise step for the Big Five?

musicblind

May Cause Damage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 21, 2018
Messages
112
Reaction score
26
Location
Nope
What made me think of it:

Today, DC Comics announced it would join Marvel in offering a comics-only subscription app granting access to their entire back catalog. I don't know DC's price point yet, but Marvel charges $10/month, $70/year, or $100/year with extras thrown in.

I've also noticed CBS All Access, NBC Peacock, HBOMax, etc. — all have apps that offer access to their back catalogs for monthly fees.

As someone who finds the selections on Kindle Unlimited and Scribd wanting, I wonder if there is a price point at which the Big Five could do something similar and increase revenue?

Could an app such as Simon and Schuster All Access or MacmillanMax ever work?

Why I think it might work:

In the 2000s and 2010s, WWE charged $40-$65 for each of their PPVs. They did 12 to 18 events per year and earned buy-rates of around 300,000 each. However, on February 24th, 2014, WWE launched the WWE Network for $9.99 a month, and it gave subscribers access to their entire back catalog as well as all live PPVs for just $10/month.

On the surface, that may sound like the makings of a financial disaster, but it wasn't. Millions signed up for the service, and WWE's stock skyrocketed from $7 a share in 2013 to $98 a share in 2019.

I think a hypothetical "Harper Collins On Demand" app has the potential to do the same — assuming bookworms are as enthusiastic as wrestling fans.

What do you guys think?

— — — —
(I don't know if I'm posting this in the right place. If I'm not, I apologize to the mod who has to move it.)
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,203
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
Let's look at another comics company, Shonen Jump, specifically, Naruto. It took a very long time for it to come to the west, and when it did, it was years behind. Fans of Naruto would resort to Japanese or Chinese fans who would buy the issue as soon as it came out and scan/translate it into English. How good of a job they would do was questionable at best (look at the infamous Duwang translation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which was the ONLY way to get it in English for decades), but fans went to this because there was no legal release. Now, Shonen Jump releases chapters in English the same day they do in Japan and you can read them online or on your phone. They're professionally translated and lettered. Some anime even gets released in the west dubbed the same day it's released in Japan! Comic fans are SUPER fans, they want to read every issue, every chapter, every side story or special. They will pay for it if it's available, and sometimes it's not. Western comics may have only a limited number printed and getting hold of back issues can be time-consuming and expensive. There's a huge incentive to pirate, but also to pay for a subscription service.

Now, books. How many people are going to want to read every romance novel? There will be people who want to read everything Stephen King wrote, yes, but is there more things than that to get? More importantly, would they be able to get things they would not be able to get otherwise? Things people would otherwise be pirating? Gabe Newell said that piracy is a matter of access, not of cost. Game of Thrones was the most pirated show before they made HBO GO a thing, then it was only majorly pirated in countries that showed it a day or two later or heavily censored it. I'm sure there's some bean-counters at the major publishers who wished libraries and used books didn't exist and everyone was forced to buy new every time, but that's not going away any time soon. The average person isn't going to see the value in accessing an incredibly broad back catalog of books when they could just go to the library for the same thing, and for free. Yes, there would be an ease-of-access component if it was all digital....but you can rent digitally from libraries already. The back catalog titles probably don't have waiting lists like new titles would.

The DRM involved would be a nightmare, plus digitizing older works that were never eBooks in the first place. It would probably be a new app, new website, new customer service techs...it would cost a lot, but what sales are they recovering that would otherwise be lost? What are they offering that can't be gotten for free elsewhere? Steam offers tons of community features for games, officially translated manga is crisp and coherent, tv shows are in HD and don't have random Spanish captions. People will pay to see GoT in beautiful HD the day it comes out instead of risking infecting their computers with viruses. What would this service offer?
 

AW Admin

Administrator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
18,772
Reaction score
6,285
Libraries fill this niche nicely.

There is still a subscription ebook service; Scribd. Oyster failed to sustain revenue, for many reasons.

There are more specialized academic subscription services; they supply libraries, and cost tens of thousands/year.

What we would see if a large scale "like Netflix" mode sprang up would be something very like what we see now with video. Competing services; specific films appear and disappear, and some are restricted to a particular service, which means you have to have multiple subscriptions.

Better to support your local library, via taxes and use, because libraries, like post offices, serve everyone equally.
 

Fuchsia Groan

Becoming a laptop-human hybrid
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 27, 2008
Messages
2,870
Reaction score
1,399
Location
The windswept northern wastes
I’m a voracious reader, but I can’t imagine subscribing to something like this. The problem: Even now, as a published author, I’m barely aware of who publishes the books I read. There are so many imprints that often you really have to care to notice this is a Hachette book or this is Penguin or whatever. And even then, you aren’t likely to develop a loyalty to one of the Big 5 because their output is so huge and diverse. Readers have loyalty to authors (and sometimes imprints or small presses), but your favorite author would have to be incredibly prolific and always publish with the same house for you to transfer that loyalty to the publisher. (Someone like James Patterson—for his fans, I can imagine a subscription making sense.)

As a mainstream/literary reader without a ton of loyalty to any single prolific author, I think the only way I would subscribe to a book Netflix is if it pulled (curated?) content from all of the Big 5. The big difference is that subscribing to Netflix or HBO Go or whatever is the only way for me to obtain their exclusive content. If I could get that content a la carte on initial release, from a third party like a bookstore, I absolutely would. (I could buy DVDs, but they’re more expensive than print books and have a delayed release.)

Now I’m wondering if there are digital book-of-the-month clubs. With the right curation by category/genre... maybe. For now, I’ll settle for buying a cheap membership that gets me discounts at my local bookstore.
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
Yes, I'm home-bound, for all practical purposes, and my library delivers and picks up for me.

Economically, the subscription model would be a money-loser for current and popular books, but those are usually the ones people want. Why lend them as part of a bulk package, when you can sell people actual full-price copies as long as the demand lasts.
(And, I used to work in a library - I can all-to-easily hear the screams of the 'deprived': "What do you mean I have to wait until the publisher thinks they've wrung all the money they can out of that new thriller! I have a subscription! I want my e-book now!")

There would be a market, perhaps, for back-catalogue or out-of-print books, but would the occasional loan be worth the hassle of digitizing the book?

As it is, if something I really want to have a copy of some old favourite, I'd rather buy an e-book copy than have a 'loan' of something I may want to read now-and-again, as I please.

This might be a useful thing, though, for a group of the self-published - if they've got a back-catalog and can afford to 'lose' one - make up a sampler of various writer's works, and let people subscribe to that pool, in hopes of picking up readers for the rest?
 
Last edited:

Albedo

Alex
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 17, 2007
Messages
7,363
Reaction score
2,924
Location
A dimension of pure BEES
Imagine if we got all the fun stuff that comes with TV streaming. Algorithmically driven cancellation of popular and acclaimed series mid-stride. Corporate meddling driving beloved creators out of their own franchises (look at what just happened with Avatar: The Last Airbender). Needing to pay for multiple different services. Be careful what you wish for.
 

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
22,617
Reaction score
7,297
Location
Wash., D.C. area
I immediately thought of libraries, too. The advantage over libraries would be no waiting lists, and the entire catalog being available in electronic format (even our relatively well-funded and well-supported library here has only had about 25% of the books I've looked for as ebooks).

Where I see this failing for book publishers is that I have no idea who published any of the books I've read this year. Or last year or ever. I buy the book for the book or for the author, and I doubt I've spent anything like $70 in a year on books from any one publisher. Maybe I have, but I don't know, and really don't care.

I can see it working for Marvel and DC because they have a fan base devoted to characters who can only appear in works produced by those publishers. However, except for series or immensely popular and high-producing authors (David Baldacci, James Patterson, etc.) I doubt anyone spends $70 a year on books from any one publisher. But I doubt even Baldacci publishes more than two books in any one year.

That said, the "subscription economy" is highly profitable for providers because most subscribers usually don't save money over the alternative. It's free money to the provider and they know how much monthly income they can count on, regardless of whether the subscriber makes use of it or not. The services are usually so cheap to provide that even for those users who do save money by subscribing, the provider laughs all the way to the bank. Yes, I'm cynical; at one point, we were paying hundreds of dollars per month to nearly a dozen different specialized subscriptions we hardly ever used [gets off middle-class trauma high horse. Sorry.]
 

ChaseJxyz

Writes 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 and 🏳️‍⚧️🌕🐺 accessories
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 5, 2020
Messages
4,524
Reaction score
6,203
Location
The Rottenest City on the Pacific Coast
Website
www.chasej.xyz
I'm a 90's baby and there was "subscription" services for books, but it was more of a Lootcrate-type thing than a Netflix one. Like I was subscribed to (at different times) to the Baby Sitter's Club Little Sisters and the Saddle Club series, so every month I would get delivered the new book in the series and sometimes there would be stickers or little ads for other things (like a yearly planner with horses on it, since Saddle Club is about horses). That introduced me to other, similar series by the same publisher and several years later when they did a YA-y sequel series to Saddle Club (Pine Hollow), I was at that target age and got an ad for that, and subscribed to that, too. This was before Amazon (or, at least, before it was a thing the average person used) so I always got the next book, plus I got put on marketing lists, which is even more value for the publisher.

Is this a thing that publishers still do? I know Amazon has something for kids books but you have to send them back after awhile. It doesn't necessarily have to be for an IP, but maybe for a specific genre, like you get a romance book every month (and maybe some ads for Birchbox or Stitchfix or something because they know that you're a married college-educated woman with 2.5 kids and own a home with a household income of $150,000+ and take one vacation every year and have 3 credit cards and are showing interest in changing your car insurance). Sounds like a good way to guarantee sales for a specific book AND selling ad space.
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,975
Reaction score
4,510
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
When my sister and I were kids, our parents subscribed to the Weekly Reader book club thing (though for some reason I don't remember getting new books every week... more like every month. But I wasn't exactly paying close attention because kid.) Got lots of fun books that I still remember fondly.
 

BenPanced

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
17,864
Reaction score
4,639
Location
dunking doughnuts at Dunkin' Donuts
Romance readers are the most voracious readers around! :)

Speaking of libraries, when I worked at one there was a woman who would come in on a Saturday and check out 10-15 Harlequin romances.

Then she'd come back the next Saturday, return those, and check out 10-15 more.

So, yeah. What she said.