You can’t judge an e-book service by its cover. So says Bryan Batten.

With the recent launch of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited e-book program, and the existence of Oyster and Scribd, two other e-book services, Batten, who is founder and CEO of Wilmington-based Entitle Books, is staffing up to compete and promote his company effectively.

That means enticing readers to venture beyond the cover and offering plenty of content.

Currently the company is advertising on its website for a senior iOS engineer and a senior Android engineer. In addition to filling those positions, Batten said, Entitle is looking for book lovers to work part time, curating the company’s growing collection of titles and helping merchandise those titles so subscribers can more easily find books that interest them.

Batten also wants to emphasize the details that differentiate his e-book subscription service from the new one offered by the online retailer for its Kindle franchise.

Yes, there is a comparable monthly subscription fee. Yes, there is an initial free trial for both services. And both plans work on a variety of devices; Entitle Books lets users read books on their mobile phones, tablets and computers, as does the new Kindle offering.

But his company offers a better value proposition, Batten contends.

“We currently have 200,000-plus titles; Amazon says Kindle Unlimited has 600,000, but that’s deceiving,” Batten said. “Many of theirs are self-published books; we have only published titles.”

Batten said, and other media outlets have reported, that Kindle Unlimited does not yet have partnerships with the “big five” publishing houses, and therefore cannot offer their titles as part of its library. Entitle, however, does have agreements with two of the five – Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins – and Batten says he is in discussions with other publishers, including the other big ones: Hachette, Macmillan and Penguin Random House.

“We’re making headway with publishers we have not gotten on with yet. We’re hopeful we’ll get them in coming weeks to give us a leg up on the competition. In order to sell a book on your site, you have to contract directly with the publishing house,” he explained, adding that some publishers don’t want to work with Amazon on enabling an unlimited subscription service.

Rather than offer unlimited access to e-books, Entitle has a tiered pricing model that enables its subscribers to download two or three books per month, or 24 books per year.

“’Unlimited’ makes sense for TV shows, movies or music,” Batten said. "A book is a much more engaging experience.”

As any Netflix customer knows, a prominent feature of the service is its recommendations, based on what the user has already rented. Amazon has long had a recommendation feature. Entitle has developed one as well, but Batten says that his recommendation feature is more personalized and precise than that of his competitor.

“They [Amazon] use what is called collaborative filtering,” he explained. “They look at your [book] buying habits and look at similar peoples’ buying habits in order to recommend other books to you. We add an element, an algorithm, that reads our books in their entirety as a basis for making recommendations.”

In addition to Recommendation Station, Entitle’s suggestion feature that is based on a subscriber’s reading history, the company also offers “If These Books Had a Baby.” A subscriber can enter two favorite books, and its software will compare principal elements of each and recommend books that combine those elements.

“Entitle is a fantastic value proposition for anyone who reads,” Batten said. “You read more. We save you a bunch of money. There’s no risk, because if you don’t like the service, you can just quit. And even if you cancel your subscription, you get to keep the books you have downloaded.”