Andrew Brown

Ellen Harvey is a freelance writer and editor who covers the latest technologies and strategies reshaping the publishing landscape. She previously served as the Senior Editor at Publishing Executive and Book Business.

Last week ebook subscription service Oyster announced a new partnership with Spritz, a startup focused on making reading faster and more effective. On Thursday Oyster created the first platform on which the public can read a full-length, in-copyright book using Spritz's speed-reading technology. RosettaBook's popular The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is available here, and the 432-page book can, theoretically, be completed in less than two hours.

By now, we've all gotten pretty used to not owning stuff-at least in the traditional, hold-it-in-your-hands sense. If you're anything like me, your DVD collection stopped growing a few years back once Netflix and Hulu bolstered their offerings. And that CD storage stand (hell, even your iTunes account) has probably gathered dust thanks to Spotify and Rdio. But books? Turns out, we're still content to pay $10 for a paperless novel that we're not even certain we'll like or finish.

While Amazon launched its own lending library on top of its Amazon Prime service, there’s still an opportunity for other competitors to create a Spotify or Netflix for books. That’s the hope of New York City-based Oyster, a new startup which announced today it has raised $3 million led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

The company is preparing a mobile app that will allow users to get unlimited access to a library of books for one monthly price.

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