A couple of months ago, I was emailed by someone from a publishing company called Inkitt — never heard of them before, but the book they gave me was pretty cool, and I made a note to keep my eye out for more by them. They describe themselves as:
a platform where budding writers can share their novels and inquisitive readers can unearth fresh content. But under the hood, we are democratizing publishing: Inkitt is built on an algorithm which analyzes reading patterns to predict future bestsellers. Using this unique data- and readers-driven approach to uncover highly addictive stories, Inkitt’s goal is to remove the middle person so that a blockbuster book is never rejected by a publishing house again. In other words, if readers love it, Inkitt publishes it.
I kinda dig the idea — I’m not sure it’ll give us the highest quality books, but it should give us some entertaining reads.
Their next step? Launching an app — today, I should stress — for iPhones, iPads, etc. (the Android version is coming soon, I’m assured, so I can use it). Check out this video…
Introducing Inkitt for iOS: Read great novels by up-and-coming authors on your iPhone and iPad from Inkitt – The Hipster’s Library on Vimeo.
In less than 2 years, Inkitt has attracted over 700,000 unique readers: the iOS app will give book lovers and publishers greater access to Inkitt’s digital library of over 80,000 stories by up-and-coming authors.
“As more people read digitally we want to make it easier and faster for people to access great literature wherever they are, whether on the go or relaxing at home,” says Inkitt’s Founder and CEO, Ali Albazaz. “Inkitt’s iOS app will better enable emerging authors to share their work with test readership groups and give readers globally the opportunity to turn the page on one of the world’s next best sellers.”
Key features include:
- Access to 80,000 stories in every genre: fantasy, sci-fi, romance, thriller, horror, adventure, action and more
- Personalized suggestions: hand-picked novels based on reader’s preferences
- App customization according to user preferences (e.g. font size, colors)
- Online/Offline: readers can save novels to their offline library to access them without an internet connection
It looks like a pretty cool app — I will be grabbing the Android version ASAP (and probably mentioning it here). Give it a go.
Oh, before I forget, here’s some screenshote of the app. But first, one more time, here’s the download link: https://inkitt.app.link/reading-app-iphone-ipad
(parts of this post were cannibalized from a press release from Inkitt — hope they don’t mind too much, but they said it better than I could paraphrase)
Bookstooge
How is the selection? Because to be honest, it sounds like I’d be the mule nosing through the slushpile looking for that ONE good carrot..
HCNewton
Good question — honestly, I haven’t looked through their selection given my backlog. They’ve put out 4 books this year that have all done pretty well, so they’re finding gems.
Bookstooge
The backlog, sigh, yes. I’ve pretty much stopped looking at new books, except for authors I “trust” and will be good for about a year 🙂