Oyster, the Netflix for books, to shut down after just two years

By Mike Flacy Published September 21, 2015

oyster the netflix for books to shut down after just two years harry potter — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Initially launching during September 2013 as a $10-per-month book subscription service, Oyster has announced that the company will be gradually closing over the next few months. With several members of the Oyster team moving onto Google Play Books, subscribers will eventually have to turn to another service, like Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, for access to a large library of books for a single monthly subscription price.

Detailed on the official Oyster blog today, the team wrote “As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading. We believe more than ever that the phone will be the primary reading device globally over the next decade—enabling access to knowledge and stories for billions of people worldwide. Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks.”

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Anyone that’s a current Oyster subscriber that wants to halt all service with the company immediately can do so by sending an email to refunds@oysterbooks.com in order to request a refund. Besides Kindle Unlimited, Scribd offers a similar subscription service for $9-a-month. That offers unlimited access to over one million digital books as well as comic books and audio books; both of which are notably missing from Amazon’s service.

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Of course, the likelihood of Google launching a similar competing service in the near future has increased exponentially with the talent acquisition poached from Oyster. Detailed by re/code, Google is paying off investors for the right to hire Oyster employees, a practice that’s commonly known as acqhire. With this talent acquisition, anyone on the Android mobile platform may soon be able to take advantage of a new book subscription service.

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