Scribd Launches in Australia

The details are, pretty much, what already leaked. The service is only available in the U.S. for now. About 640,000 titles are available, most from Amazon’s own publishing imprints or by self-published authors who’d previously enrolled their books in KDP Select. There are books from traditional publishers as well — no big-5 publishers — but Abrams, Algonquin, Workman, Open Road and Bloomsbury, among others. Two thousand audiobooks from Audible are included, and a membership to Kindle Unlimited comes with a free three-month Audible subscription.

“You can keep up to ten books at a time and there are no due dates,” according to Amazon’s help pages. “Read your Kindle Unlimited books on any Kindle device or free Kindle reading apps.”

One splashy series of note that is available: The first…

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Hillary Clinton Launches High-Profile Book Tour

9 June 2014 by particularkev

The Netflix of kids’ books? Epic launches on iPad for $9.99/month

29 January 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

The Netflix(s nflx) monthly subscription model is a hit for movies and TV, and is spreading to music with paid versions of services like Pandora and Spotify. In 2014, it looks like the model could finally catch on for e-books.

On Tuesday, a company called Epic launched a service that offers children a monthly library of over 2,000 children’s books on the iPad, including popular titles like Olivia, the Berenstain Bears and Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The books arrive instantly through streaming, and the service also provides features like personalized recommendations and off-line access. Here are some more titles:

Epic’s launch comes weeks after Oyster, which my colleague Laura Owen last year crowned the Netflix of e-books, received a major investment to expand its $9.95 ebook service aimed at adults.

It’s obviously too soon to say how Epic will fare but, as with any monthly subscription service…

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