Epic!

7,000+ top quality kids books for $5/month is a no-brainer for parents like me who want their kids to spend at least some of their daily screen time reading. Epic's generous offer of free lifetime access to all teachers and librarians has been well received by tens of thousands of teachers and librarians making Epic the leading kids ebook service in less than a year since launch. My kids and tens of thousands of others love Epic! And that makes me, the parent, very happy :)

I recently gave this to my nephews as a gift. My bro tells me it's a lifesaver because his kids are reading more. I never realized how hard it must be to get kids from that generation to read because of all the tech distractions. Epic solves this by making the books "fun" again. Pretty cool.

I think this is a cool idea, but my kids (9 and 6) still like paper books and comics. Tablets are for game playing (and in turn somewhat restricted in their use) -- but they can pick up a book any time they want. They can also bring it to school (tablets / phones aren't allowed). Perhaps at some point in the future every single kid will have a tablet to him/herself, bring it to school, etc. but it'll be hard to police the reading vs. PvZ playing :)

Similar to Oyster (https://www.oysterbooks.com/), Epic! is a $9.99 subscription to kids books on the iPad.

Very similar model to Oyster. But I wonder if this might be the more effective strategy. Thinking (assuming a parent/kid wants to use an iPad vs. paper book): Parents will likely be more than willing to spend $9.99 for their child to read more. If they continue to renew their subscription - so their child can retain access - and Epic! expands their library in that time, parents might grow so attracted to the service that they use it themselves. Or, they just hesitate to cancel what is a valuable service because they feel guilty, like they're not giving their child the best chance to succeed. (The latter point suggests "success" is based on revenue. That Epic! could generate more because/if people continue their subscription even if their engagement is low.) How much can one e-book company differentiate its product from another? Would seem that content is still king. (Or maybe what a "book" is gets changed entirely -- eventually.)

Related: http://bookboard.com/