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Litfy reading service now in Open Beta

I’m sure you recall the leak earlier this week that Amazon are working on a Netflix-style ebook subscription service.  That leak caused a small flurry of similar services to come out of the woodwork, including Flatleaf, Afictionado, and now Litfy.

Litfy just launched this past month, and currently they are focused on offering ebooks for the academic market. At first glance, you probably won’t think that Litfy will offer a Netflix-style ebook subscription. They currently only have public domain titles,  and there’s no charge to use the service.  They plan to offer apps, too, and those will be free as well. In fact there’s not even any mention of a fee. There’s a reason for that.

Litfy are a test bed for Platify, a Swedish startup. They plan to get into eBook and digital content subscription services, and they are using Litfy to refine the concept and tweak the features offered to users. When they are done they will have platform that they can use to either offer ebooks themselves or they could license the platform.

It’s rather interesting, but I’m not sure it’s such a great idea to focus on this one niche. The academic ebook subscription market is dominated by 2 names: Coursesmart and Vitalsource. Either one of those companies have enough funds that they could buy Platify just using their pocket change. Also, the digital textbook rental market has gotten quite crowded this fall. Litfy will have to compete with Amazon, Chegg, and Kno, and those are just the companies that rent the digital textbooks. Add in the ones that sell them and the market implodes upon itself.

Now, if you regard Litfy as a test bed then it doesn’t have to be commercially successful, but it’s still a fair amount of effort focused on a highly competitive niche.  I’m going to be watching to see if it pans out.

via The Local

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Comments


Mikaela September 17, 2011 um 5:57 am

Sure, there are a lot of other services but how many are available in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries?
Not many, I think. ( I have really looked, to be honest :)) Still, I think it is a great idea since a lot of people read on their smartphones here.


Anna Lombardi September 17, 2011 um 8:05 am

I use Litfy ( a friend won one of their iPad giveaways and invited me) and Litfy is free fiction, not textbooks. It is classical fiction books that I can read, bookmark, save and all that. I especially like the free part and that I don’t have to give any credit card info or anything like that.

Nate Hoffelder September 17, 2011 um 9:10 am

According to the interview of the founders, it’s aimed at the academic market.

But you could be right in that my jump from the academic market to textbooks might not have been valid.


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