Social Media + eBooks = Social Books

eBook sales is poised to hit the billion dollar sales mark this year and is predicted to triple by 2015 . Clearly, there is a market for eBooks but is digitizing books all we could do? Maybe not.

Two entrepreneurs, Jason Johnson and Jason Illian, are attempting to not just digitize books, but also make them social. They call it ‘Social Books’. From The New York Times:

“Short-form content (e.g. status updates, tweets) on the Web is very interactive, very dynamic,” Mr. Johnson said. “You can see which of your friends read the same article and what they thought of it. It made us ask, ‘Can this be applied to long-form content? Can we take the advent of social media and apply it to the way we read books on tablets?’”

Social Book, as depicted in the video below, enables friends to read a book together even in different locations. Readers are able to share any part of the content with their Facebook and Twitter friends. The content could also be changed in real time by authors or even the readers. It works pretty much like Google Docs.

Social doesn’t just stop here. Users are also able to purchase a book from a friend’s bookshelf, making eBook libraries connected, searchable and shareable. Lastly, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reading from a Blackberry or an iPad, the application is built to be able to read and share on any device. But for a start, it will launch as an iPad application first before expanding to other platforms.

Phew, it surely sounds like a complicated eBook application?  The greatest challenge is still copyright related issues. The only titles available for download are those in the public domain, which aren’t that appealing to the masses.

“To develop its catalog, the company has enlisted the help of John Ingram, founder of the Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book distributor. Mr. Ingram, who is also an angel investor in Social Books, has done the same for other eBook applications, including iBooks for the iPhone and iPad. Social Books expects its digital shelves to be beefed up in time for the holidays.”

The application isn’t on iTunes yet. But interested individuals are able to register for its free limited beta applications through the company’s website.

– Penn-Olson.com by Willis Wee. Penn Olson is a tech, marketing and business blog based in Singapore.

Link to full article