When we took a close look at ebook reader app Oyster soon after it launched last year, we were bowled over by the fluid and comfortable reading experience it offered.
The ‘Netflix for novels’ service, which offers access to a gargantuan library of over half a million books from mainstream publishers for $10 a month, has now brought its service to desktop and mobile browsers, adding to its line-up of established iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire apps.
Oyster’s new web reader has been designed to offer bookworms a seamless reading experience, with no breaks or page flipping necessary. Each chapter is downloaded in its entirety, leaving you to simply read and scroll your way through the text, the New York-based company said in a blog post on Thursday.
“In designing this experience, we wanted to move away from the way books are traditionally displayed on the web – contained in a PDF-style viewer,” Oyster explained in the post.
It added that its newly offered web experience “is more like reading a blog post or web article (think the New York Times). The result is a reading experience that feels fast, fluid, and native to the web.”
All five of Oyster’s reading themes are available with the web version of its service, as are five text sizes and a night mode. As you would expect, your reading activity is synced across all your devices, doing away with the need for frustrating page searches.
While reading a novel on a desktop screen may not be your preferred way to enjoy a book, adding a web reader rounds off Oyster’s service nicely and gives its subscribers added options when it comes to tackling its enormous library of reading material.
Oyster’s move comes a week after Amazon launched its Kindle Unlimited service, offering subscribers unlimited access to its ebook and audiobook titles for $10 a month. The cross-platform service includes around 600,000 ebooks and 2,000 audiobooks, though doesn’t include all the titles available for purchase in its Amazon Kindle ebook store.
