BooksBites: Would you read a book by email, 10 minutes at a time every day?

Hi everybody, an idea came to my mind few days ago, because I realized that I'm struggling to find the time to read the books I want but at the same time I spend a lot of time at the computer, reading news, emails, newsletter, etc. So my thought was: why don't transform a book into a series of email automatically sent to me every morning at a certain time?

I've started from a personal need, because I've thought that an email at a time I would have been able to read some books that are on my shelf since months. But I don't know if it worth it to build develop something for it, maybe the possibile market is too small or a product like this wouldn't last for long in people's email box. I don't know, I have some doubts.

Obviously there would be some limitation because of the copyrights, but in my case the books that I want to read are quite old, some classics of english literature, so I don't think there will be any problems at the beginning.

I found some other website that offer the same service, but their website are quite old, the UX is not very good and the books available are few, not very attractive and poorly curated (I tested one of this and received a batch of emails that was simply impossible to read).

What do you think about it? Would you use a service like this? 1 - Register and chose a book between the available ones 2 - The next day at 8.00 am you will received the first pages of the book, that you can read in 8-10 minutes 3 - When you finish, you click a button on the email, confirming that you have read that part 4 - The next day the second part comes to your inbox…and so on until the end.

It could be a subscription model service or maybe a one time payment for each book.

Thanks for your feedbacks!

Uchenna Okafor

I get the initiative but I don't think I'd personally be interested. I think the user experience with clicking a link in a email that will redirect you to a browser just to close would be a bit awk. I already hate it when I click to unsubscribe to an email, only for it to redirect me to a web browser that I'd have to close off. I wish it would just unsubscribe in the background.

I think the main limitation is that emails do not serve as a good medium to mimic an app like experience. What is the name of this other business that already provides the same service?

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Yuri Ceschin Author

@_UchennaOkafor thanks for the comment, I agree with you about the click and redirect in browser bad experience. I was thinking, maybe using AMP in email could resolve the problem, but I know that AMP is not so widespread right now. The other services I know are http://www.dripread.com/ and https://www.dailylit.com/

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I think that's a really cool idea, and goes in the direction of Blinkist. What's your plan for validating the idea? How do you plan to get your first users?

I personally would maybe use such a service but for non-fiction books. If you would give me a summary of each chapter, then I'd definitely subscribe. That would be much like a newsletter, quick and easy to digest.

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Uchenna Okafor

@scriptifyjs

Yeah you've got a fair point, it's kind of like MorningBrew, they send business newsletters each morning. I signed up and barely read it tho.

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