Books as Magazines?

I found an article that discusses a future of books that looks a lot like online magazines. In this system, small chunks of fiction are sent directly to a subscriber's device for about five dollars a month. Each chunk only takes about fifteen minutes to read and are sent in installments. This article also discusses the idea of the company looking at user history and downloads so that they can tailor the content subscription of the streams to each individual user, which was something we talked about in one of our discussions. This article only came out a few months ago, so it leaves us with a plethora of questions:

"Do book enthusiasts actually want to engage with literature the way they engage with magazines? And can they afford to? After shelling out every month for Spotify and Netflix subscriptions, for New York Times digital, for electronic tablet magazines, for immersive online videogames, for online file storage, and, oh right, for high-speed internet, will people sign up for yet another monthly charge? Will they have the intellectual bandwidth to consume what they bought? And will they come to trust or despise the online studios pushing books onto their phones and iPads?"-Ryan Tate, The Future of Books Looks a Lot Like Netflix

I think these questions are really important to consider and it will be very interesting to see how the future of books unfolds.

Tate, R. (2014). The Future of Books Looks a lot Like Netflix. Retrieved from  http://www.wired.com/2014/03/books-become-magazines/