There has been lots of noise lately in response with Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and a slew of other companies that are threatening to terminate peoples accounts. They did this for a myriad of reasons, some valid and some not. People want more control over their the storage of the content they purchased and to keep it in a safe place. Ownshelf gives you the ability to upload your books to their servers and keeps them in a cloud-based bookshelf. There are social options to friend people and see what books they have on their shelf. Once you upload a book you can download it to any device you are on. Also, anyone else can, too.
In order to use this unique service you need to connect it with your Facebook Account. This is what Ownshelf uses to allow customers to friend other people or to view their content. The entire user interface is fairly intuitive and people should be able to upload their books with minimal difficulty.
There are no security measures that would curb people from uploading pirate books to the site and sharing them with their friends. Ownshelf does not scrutinize any of the books that someone would upload to their account. This will undoubtedly incur authors’ and publishers’ ire, as soon as they realize people are sharing their books. Right now under the existing system, if you upload a book, anyone else can download it.
Rick Marazzani, the developer of Ownshelf, recently said, “Our goal is to get authors into the service to share their books directly. Imagine a famous romance writer sharing her favorite books by Jane Austen and Victor Hugo, while also sharing back catalog titles, or five chapter preview of her latest book. It is a direct relationship between an author and her fans while building a new base socially. Ownshelf is disruptive, and we are working hard to take books forward for the benefit of both creators and consumers.”
Ownshelf will be unveiling an online HTML5 reading app to read books on Google Chrome and Apple Safari. This will obviously benefit anyone who wants access to their ebooks on a MAC, PC, iPad, or Android tablet. The developers also intend on eventually monetizing the platform with enhanced paid features.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
