Many digital readers have found themselves of the predicament of reading a badly formatted book and wishing they could have their money back. In other cases, students may only need a few specific chapters for a research project and might not want the complete e-textbook. A new startup from Israel by the name of TotalBooX is seeking to sell books by the chapter, something seldom done in the world of ebooks.
Total Boox is building a new platform for ebook distribution and consumption. The reader does not have to purchase a book upfront. Instead they download the book into their tablet device, and only pay for the portion of the book they read.
So how does the payment structure of this new initiative work? You pay proportionally. If you simply read 10% of the book, you pay 10% of the price. If you complete the whole book, you pay the full price. Users will have to pay money to get credits in their account, and that credit is used to pay for the pages they read.
CEO of TotalBoox Yoarv Lorch said “We are trying to rid the world from outdated, expensive ritual of buying a book before you read it. On TotalBooX, sharing an interesting ebook is as easy as drag-and-dropping it into a friend’s account, and there’s no need to enter any login details or payment information. Add social media integration, the platform hopes to appeal to real book lovers.
Like most ebook retailers and new business models, publishers want to jump on-board, but don’t want their frontlist titles added. TotalBooX is capturing deep analytics that will monitor peoples sharing and reading patterns and then share it with the publishers. Still, the company is launching its beta right now and offers 10,000 different books. You can download the app and check it out on the Good e-Reader App Store.
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.
