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Nasir and Matt discuss Oyster, coined the Netflix forBooks, and why their model may work out over the long-term. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: I’m excited for today because we’re going to start reading some books for the first time. I don’t think I’ve read a book all the way through – at least a fiction book all the way through – in a long, long time. MATT: I was just telling somebody this story. It’s probably more embarrassing so I shouldn’t tell it. NASIR: No, it’s okay. MATT: Many years ago, a long time ago, I was in an interview for a job and one of the questions they asked me was… NASIR: “What was the last book you read?” MATT: Well, I don’t think it was. I don’t remember the exact question but it was something along those lines or, like, “What book would you use to describe…?” whatever the position was, and I hadn’t read a book in a while so I just made something completely up. Someone had told me about a book a couple of months ago so I just said that book and then completely made up what the book was about – just made up facts and everything – and the guy goes, like, “All right. Good answer. That’s a good answer.” NASIR: He was like, “Yeah, I read that book, too. I enjoyed it,” and you guys are both making up the story as if you guys have read it. That was for your pizza job, right? MATT: Yeah, it was very important to be well-read at that pizzeria. Yeah. Well, I think you and I are probably the same in that we read so much – you know, either case law or statutes or practice guides or just blogs. I mean, there’s a good amount of reading and, by the time I get done with all that, I don’t really want to read a book. I’d rather just watch something and not have to make my eyes work as hard. NASIR: Yeah, and even from an entertainment perspective, when I want to read for entertainment purposes, I don’t want to read fiction. It’s just I want to learn – read information, I suppose, I guess. MATT: I’m with you on that. Pretty much every good book turns into a movie or a TV show. NASIR: That’s right. That’s your screening process, right? MATT: Yeah. That’s why I’m not too concerned, but a lot of people are pretty excited about this Oyster which I think I might have heard about this before but I don’t know. Essentially, they’re calling themselves – or they’ve been called – the Netflix of books which, I guess, a book can be just as easily binge-read as it can a show on Netflix binge-watched or, you know, a documentary or something like that. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: Is that how you interpret that? NASIR: Well, I would say Netflix is the idea that it’s kind of unlimited. What’s interesting about this model is that, first, actually, Amazon has its own unlimited subscription service. I think it’s $10.00 a month or so. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: But it’s actually a little known fact that another company or another business model that’s very similar to this was invented a long time ago before Oyster and Amazon was even around and it was called the public library. MATT: I knew you were going there before you finished it. I was hoping you weren’t but… NASIR: I love how things just get reinvented. Obviously, the nuance to this is that it’s electronic. You know, you get ebooks. You don’t actually have to drive to the library and they’re not physical books but, hey, power to them. MATT: And you mentioned the Kindle part. This is different. Oyster is different because it’s actually somehow got some sort of agreement with I guess the five biggest publishers so it seems like it truly is an unlimited – I was going to say all-you-can-eat but that doesn’t make sense – all-you-can-read book arrangement. NASIR: No, you’re right. That’s the big difference here. The big five publishers – and you guys probably haven’t heard of these publishers – I mean, Hatchet and Harper Collins,