The news that Oyster is closing shop (or at least, abandoning their eBooks subscription business) suggests a re-evaluation of the subscription eBook business model is in order.

We’ve written before about the challenges of the subscription model for eBooks. The model has fundamental challenges:

1. Limited catalog
2. Poor discovery methods
3. Proprietary Readers
4. Competition from Amazon

Because the publishers live off their best-sellers and the subscription business is an all-you-can-eat model, the publishers have been reluctant to add their top titles to Oyster and Scribd. (For example, this article suggests 15% of books account for 80% of sales — if that 15% isn’t well represented in the subscription inventory, users are likely to abandon the service when they can’t find the books they want).

This leads to the second issue. If I can’t find the books I want, that the marketing world has told me I am “supposed” to read (The Girl on the Train, 50 Shades of Grey et. al.), then what am I going to read? I need tools to proactively discover great things to read, that are in the subscription catalog. And the recommendations need to come pro-actively, otherwise I am going to the catalog to read something the NY Times tells me I should read, and when I don’t find it, I get frustrated and leave. Oyster and Scribd aren’t very good at that.

Both Oyster and Scribd use proprietary readers. That’s not a fatal flaw, and the readers are actually quite nice (I particularly like Scribd’s iPad reader — clean, minimalist and easy to use). But it’s one more thing I have to learn, one more bit of friction in a world where I’m already reading on my Kindle, my computer, my phone, my Amazon Fire tablet, downloading eBooks from my library, not to mention physical books. Readers really don’t need another environment to read in. And with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, the bar to jump over to get a user to subscribe on an ongoing basis to a subscription reading service is just too high.

And that is what Oyster found out, after $17M invested and major partnerships with most of the big publishers.

What might save the day?

Subscription services need to bring more value to readers than just “all you can eat” reading. Bring me things I can’t get anywhere else. Some ideas:

1. Great books I can only get from you. (Negotiate a deal with 20 major indie authors to write books solely for your platform).
2. Deliver great news and information about books. I might only read one book every few weeks, but The Martian is coming into theaters and I’d be very interested to read lots of news about that, since I loved the book. I’d love author interviews with my favorite authors, and a Medium-like news feed filled with booky goodness (especially if it was personalized). If Scribd were “organizing” the bookish part of the Internet and bringing me personalized book news every few days, I’d be on the service all the time.
3. Truly personalized book recommendations. It’s not enough to say, “oh Mark likes Fantasy, let’s recommend The Lord of the Rings (which is what Scribd is doing to me right now). I mean, come on. Give me something interesting! Give me a way to import my Goodreads account so you can see all the books I’ve already read and stop recommending them to me.
4. Book Clubs. People love to discuss books. Give me a virtual book club environment where I can chat about what I’m reading. Reddit has a vast community interested in books. If a subscription service wants to be sticky, find a way to bind me to a community of book lovers.

The key is, a simple all-you-can-eat reading environment isn’t enough, not at ~$10 a month. If it’s $10 a year, no problem — but that won’t support the publishers.

(btw: at The Hawaii Project we’re tackling #2 and #3, check us out).

The Water Knife is an extremely interesting near-future, post-apocalyptic take on the water problems faced by the American Southwest.

Angel Velasquez is a Water Knife – a vicious and not-quite-amoral enforcer who helps Catherine Case control the water supply from the Colorado river, on which everyone downriver depends. Lucy Monroe is a Pultizer-nominated investigative journalist poking all the wrong people in Phoenix and California. Maria is a desperately poor migrant who’s made her way to Phoenix. When Angel is sent from Vegas to Phoenix to get his hands on some water rights, their paths collide in a brutal and violent exploration of what people will do to each other because of poverty, desperation,  extreme conditions or just plain evil.

While The Water Knife lays this water shortage at the feet of man’s development and climate change, it turns out this isn’t the first time the Southwest has undergone drought. In fact drought led to the migration and eventual disappearance of the ancient Anasazi, the creators of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. That drought created enormous social upheaval, migration and violence (a subject I covered a bit here  and here, including extremely brutal mass killings and cannibalism).

The Water Knife is a great read, no matter your point of view about climate change, urban development or water usage in the California and the southwest. It recalls the best of William Gibson’s cyberpunk masterpiece Neuromancer (is Catherine Case named after Case, the anti-hero of Neuromancer?). It’s an all-too-plausible extrapolation of the challenges facing California (often mis-reported as saying California will be out of water in a year). It’s a classic sci-fi/noir with a Southwestern flair. It’s an exploration of whether mankind is inherently evil, and a reminder that civilization might be a thin veneer over our violent natures. And it’s a fast, enjoyable read.

Bacigalupi’s characters occasional veer a little to close to stereotypes (the bad guy redeemed by a woman, the muckraking journalist), but those are minor quibbles. Great read, and thought provoking.

If you’re wondering what to read next after The Water Knife, head over to this page: http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/what-should-I-read-next-after–The-Water-Knife–46654. And in the non-fiction category, consider Cadillac Desert, a history of water in the southwest which features prominently in The Water Knife.