Oyster surprise

I'm beta-testing Oyster, and I like it for a few reasons I didn't expect, while disliking it for the reasons that I expected to like it.
My usual grumpiness about ebook readers is that they focus much more on the shopping experience than the reading experience. But the shopping experience in Oyster is fabulous. I am totally sold on the $10/month all-you-can-read plan. It is THE most fun to see a book I want to read, click on it and just start reading. The book selection contains a lot of slightly older, semi-popular books that I hadn't read mainly because I didn't feel like spending $12.99 on each one of them. A subscription model unblocks that problem. Granted, I am only selecting books I already know something about, so I don't need a lot of editorial context and reviews. And I know that most of the books I'm looking at now, I won't want to keep and re-read. As my sister the librarian puts it, these are "cuddle books," books to read for pleasure.
There's also a concern that this model requires a connection for some tasks. I'm curious to take this into the subway tomorrow and see what those tasks are.
The reading experience, which is what interested me in the first place, is actually not that great yet. It feels very proof-of-concepty -- there are just 5 options for font/color packages, all of which are quite nice; 5 type sizes; and a slider bar for screen brightness. All these options are accessed through a separate menu instead of Stanza-style on-page controls. And you're still forced to right-justify, which makes the pages look ugly, and the view only works vertically, as far as I could tell, which makes for some very short and airy force-justified lines. The page framework never really disappears, and it's very easy, especially because the controls are on the right-hand side and I'm right-handed, to trigger the full suite of page controls when you're just trying to turn the page. Page turn gesture is also still horsey -- you have to flick up, instead of tapping, and the page turn is animated, which is just silly in 2013. I get the feeling more options are on the way, which will be nice -- this version is built just for iPhone, not even for iPad yet. So I'm hopeful that the view improves, but the store and business model are already pretty amazing.

Let's agree it is still not completely pleasant to buy and read ebooks. My suggestion for what's missing: monks.

To compare: Among the pleasures of reading a physical book are the experience of browsing shelves in a store, a library, or your house; flipping open a book at any point to look at it for as long as you like before committing; being able to pay for or check out the book in a few simple ways; and reading a well-laid-out page that is free of typos.

In the ebook market, no one seems to be working on these problems (maybe because of the distraction of building hardware, making markets, price-fixing). Because who works on the day-to-day usability of a book? The monks who work in bookstores and libraries and obsessively shelve, neaten and re-order; the monks who edit, proofread and typeset physical books and magazines. In new media, where I work, the monk class has not yet arisen, and when individual examples of the type arise, no one really knows what to do with them. There's no room in fast-moving, fast-changing new media for monks who do one small, audience-facing thing well, over and over.

Sub-thesis: Trying to buy an e-audiobook is so much worse I can't even start. Sorry, Mom & Dad, for our failed attempt yesterday to acquire you a Jo Nesbø audio mystery for your 8-hour drive.