This post originally appeared in Business Insider.
By Caroline Moss
Meet Oyster, the book subscription app that wants to do for books what Netflix did for movies and what Spotify did for music; provide an all-you-can-read experience for a monthly fee. For $9.95 a month, you can download and enjoy titles from HarperCollins, Workman, Melville House, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boasting 100,000 titles so far, Oyster is still working to procure more publishing companies to add to its roster.
Instead of focusing on a tablet experience to compete with other various e-readers, founders Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown, and Willem Van Lancker shared on the company blog that they’re concentrating on making a seamless app for smartphones.
We’re building Oyster as an end-to-end product created specifically for mobile. Everything from recommendations to the in-book experience allows you to easily reach for books at moments of impulse throughout your day— whether on the subway, waiting for a friend to meet you for coffee, or while relaxing in the park.
Founders Fund, a team of venture capitalists that includes Peter Thiel and Sean Parker, is Oyster’s lead investor in their first round of financing. The app is currently in waitlist mode, a tactic many apps use (remember email app Mailbox?) to build excitement and hype around its launch. It began rolling out invitations yesterday. You can visit Oyster to get yourself on the waiting list.
See also: The Weirdest Things About Americans, According to an Indian International Student
