I have now seen GetAbstract mentioned and linked to on a few blogs. (Steve Rubel’s MicroPersuasion, and in the post on Keeping Up To Date on Creating Passionate Users). It is a service that provides a summary service for books; it has a fairly good selection of titles and focuses on the types of books busy executives might read. It’s a nice service or at least it seemed so until I looked at the pricing. I had to wonder if those who had linked to the product had read this section because it sure as hell does not appeal to me.

There are two personal options:

Gold Subscription (US$299 per year / US$179 per half-year — less than 10 cents per summary)
more…
You receive:
Unlimited Access: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week access to the entire library. All you can eat. Select, read, download and study whichever summaries you wish, any time you want.
More than 3,000 summaries in PDF, Palm and MS reader formats: Find out the specific information you need. Learn the core knowledge offered in the best business books.
Instant Access: Any summary you choose is e-mailed to you immediately.
Full access to our steadily growing list of audio summaries.
Personalized Summary Service: Once a week, we will automatically send you a summary of a new business book, selected according to the interests you list in your personal profile.

Silver Subscription (US$89 per year)
You receive:
30 summaries of great new business books per year. Here’s how:
Every other week, you will receive a new summary that is tailored to your personal interest profile – 26 summaries in all.
Additionally, you can download 4 summaries of your choice during your subscription.

So the way it works is you either fork out $300 and get free range (Who is to say you will ever get close to listening to the number required to make that investment pay off) or you choose the exceptionally limited silver option at $89 which gives you the choice of only 26 titles delivered from your “personal interest profile” and choosing a lousy four summaries for yourself. The system stinks. Even if the $89 option allowed free range for the full 30 it might be worth considering but to be sent 26 books not even of my choosing, I think not!

Great product- lousy pricing structure!

WORTH NOTING that the team has since this post completely reworked their pricing policies and now offers much more in depth selection at lower p.rices