Future of Books and Netflix

While researching the future of books, I stumbled upon an article that explained an interesting new service related to reading. The article, titled The Future of Books looks a lot like Netflix, was published in Wired, a magazine about technological innovations and trends, on March 11, 2014. It discusses a service called Rooster, which is a section of a larger company called Plympton. Rooster works in a way that is very similar to Netflix; for 5 dollars a month, the subscriber receives "bite-sized pieces of fiction". The short pieces create 2 full books within the span of a month. Much like Netflix, Rooster can title the books you receive to your preferences and previous interests. According to the article, similar "literary subscription" services already exist and are growing in popularity. I thought this was an interesting spin on the "future of books" question, slightly different than the ebooks discussion we read about for class. At the same time, it reminded me of the way that some Charles Dickens' (and other authors') books were written; in weekly or monthly installments in a newspaper, rather than as a traditional novel. It'll be interesting to see if this service is a fad, or a trend that continues to grow in popularity.