Pay as You Read

‘The world of publishing has evolved one small step and then stopped,’ says a digital entrepreneur, one of three whose Israeli start-up is collaborating with the venerable Oxford University Press. Buying the Book Becomes a Deterrent to Readers: Total Boox may look like any ebook store, but it isn’t. It allows you to search for and read books, and create your own reading shelf. The twist is that you pay only for what you read. Total Boox employs 13 people and has a turnover of $4m. Yoav Lorch, founder and CEO of Total Boox says: The world of publishing has evolved one small step and then stopped. The digital revolution didn’t happen like it did in the music or video. There are still books that need readers and readers who need books. There have to be more open, fair and democratic ways to connect than by having to buy a book. All the book world is still tied to this purchasing model and it’s annoying, humiliating and time-consuming. Buying the book becomes a deterrent to readers. There is lots of content that you’re interested in, but you can’t jump over the purchasing barrier. We, instead, want to move the industry from the purchasing model to the reader-centric model. All the books are available–no questions asked–but if you read only 3 percent, you pay only 3 percent of the price and you own 3 percent of book. This is called “progressive ownership”: what you read is what you own. You never pay for what you don’t read. I call this radical fairness or radical simplicity. Source: publishingperspectives.com