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Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

"Kindle Unlimited has a killer feature Oyster never had -- Kindles."

That, and an enormous selection.

"Reading books on phones is awful."

It depends on the phone. Many people are perfectly happy reading for hours on a phone screen, particularly if they can choose the foreground/background colours (e.g. white on black for someone with an AMOLED screen).

"Reading them on Kindles is the closest screens can come to reading on books."

Well, in terms of display, it's the closest screens have_come, but it's unlikely to be the closest screens can come.

But, the thing which makes reading on a Kindle Paperwhite a pain for me, is that I can't flip through the book. Page turns are slower than on a paper book. I can't use my fingers to mark two different parts of the book, and move rapidly back and forth. Oh, and why can't I view images inline with the text?

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I pay for Kindle Unlimited and can say first-hand that it has a terrible selection of mostly self-published and second rate books. Kindle itself of course has the best selection, but that's on a pay-per-book model.

The brilliant thing about Oyster was that they have so much first rate material in their "unlimited" model. There are plenty of arguments to be made about how many books you can read a month etc., but those arguments miss the point. Oyster opened a whole new browsing mindset where you could see a book cover, open it immediately and essentially flip through the book reading bits here and there and re-visit it later if it piqued your interest enough. It's unlike the library where, even in digital libraries, there are queues and "holds" and checkout limits. It's unlike Kindle where you have to commit by actually buying every book which becomes prohibitively expensive if you're just browsing, or Kindle Unlimited where the selection is, as I previously mentioned, dismal. It's hard to imagine until you've used it, but having been an Oyster subscriber for a couple years, I can say it's a shift in the way I think about books.

The way you feel about Oyster is the way I feel about Safari Books Online. It's just so awesome for books about software and IT. I wish there were an equivalent for other areas in which I have deep interest.

BTW I also really like Blinkist (a book summary site). They don't have as wide a selection as GetAbstract, but the Blinkist folks are thoughtful about the books they add, their summaries don't feel jarring, and the iPad app is smooth as butter.

Initially, I thought the Kindle Unlimited selection was lacking, but most searches turn up at least one or two useful books I'd have impulsively purchased anyway. Definitely worth it for me.

> It depends on the phone.

I think it depends on the person more than the phone. I've used many different smartphones and tablets, not one of them is comfortable for reading a book-length text on. I know there are people who disagree. But everyone who doesn't disagree isn't a customer for Oyster.

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