New to WIP?
We're a group of makers shipping together. We help each other stay accountable and reach our goals.
Apply for access
Topics
Other questions
Back
Question
WIP Fam - Please roast booksted.com (Netflix for Books)!
BooksTed.com us like Netflix but for books. I challengeed myself in building something in 29 and on day 10, I am done with core product. Next for me is to get some more books on the platform.
👋 Join WIP to participate
How does this work? I can download any ebook for a monthly subscription?
Current books listed are the ones you bought personally or publishers/authors listed it here?
minor UI issue screenshot attached: check the highlighted part
You can read any book only online (not download them like epub or pdf) but its unlimited reading. As of now the books listed are like sample books and working on legal permissions from authors and publishers by end of this week. If dont get it then will remove those unlicensed books. Wanted to have some real books to get the reading experience but yeah I am unaware of the legality of this even during testing.
And thank you so much for reporting the bug too.
PS. Let me know what you think about the reading experience as its different from classic page flips like on Kindle or general readers, and each chapter is a like a long scrolling page similar to a blog post. Made it this way as more and more people are now used to scrolling than page flip of books
I haven't read any yet. Do I have to start a trial for that? Create account was asking for credit card details
You can signup for testing using Stripe test card, the 4242 one
I’ve signed up for a product like this before - check out Oyster. They ended up getting shut down, but I enjoyed it while I had it.
I think your biggest challenge will be at your price point, I would need to read at least two moderately expensive books in order for the product to be worth it.
I remember struggling to keep up that pace - I was ready to churn the subscription before they shut down.
Another thought is a much lower price point with less expensive books (lots of old famous books are now part of public domain). Even for a free book, I would pay a trivial monthly cost for a better reading experience. I’m thinking Amazon’s Prime Kindle reading bundle.
Hope this helps!
I constantly use similar app bookmate.com, it's very popular in Russia, most of my friends have subscriptions. The idea is similar, you can read online, but can't download a book. As far as I know, they publish both free books and have deals with publishers.
Oh, I wasn't aware of this. I would check this out, and I probably need a different value proposition than just unlimited books. I am aware of Scribd but that one doesn't have the good books and generally has the common stuff.