Pubslush Blog

Stuff We Love: 24symbols

Since part of our job over here at Pubslush is to be complete and total internet junkies, we find ourselves constantly finding new, awesome websites that we just have to share with our audience. We know you Slushers out there like to be up on the new, being the trandsetters you are, so we’ll try to make that a bit easier for you. 24symbols is one of the latest sites to catch our attention and we were lucky enough to get the low down about the site from one of the co-founders, Justo Hidalgo.

What is the concept of 24symbols? 

It’s very simple: it’s a service to read digital books on the Internet based on a subscription model. For a user, this means: enter 24symbols, select the book you want to read, and go! Share it with your friends, change from one device to another without losing what you’re reading, and all for free or by paying a subscription fee.

What is the goal of the site? 

Our goal is to offer a cloud-based reading system with a very attractive business model. Read whatever you want, whenever you wanted and share it with your friends. This provides some very interesting reactions, as already stated by different companies and studies, not just us: readers spend more time reading online; discovery, a critical topic in the e-book business, is clearly helped by social reading and sharing; and, as you said, new e-reading capabilities attracts new readers to the online world. Summarizing, we want to be a hub for social e-readers, publishers and authors.

Who is the audience?

Everyone that can read!  But obviously people that like to read fiction and non-fiction and with some type of electronic device (iPad, smart phones, tablets…)

What changes or adaptations can be expected in the future?

We’re always moving and adapting, as any start-up today. From a technical standpoint, and after developing the web-based version, the iPad native app and the HTML5 version (for smart phones and tablets), we’re working on iPhone and Android native version to improve the reading and user experience, while we keep on adding new features to all our readers. We’re also growing our catalog in Spain and now in the UK, while we listen to interests in any other country or region.

Who created the idea for the site and why? 

It was four partners (you can see us at 24symbols.com/team along with the rest of the team.) The idea and vision behind 24symbols comes from one question and one insight:

• How could we provide the most books in the world, available to everyone, with the fairest possible price, and by being a hub where publishers, authors and readers could all feel comfortable?
• If you look at other cultural and entertainment industries, you can see a clear trend that goes from pure ownership to consumption. Spotify in the music industry or Netflix in the movie industry are two clear examples, but there are many others.

Merging these two things, we realized that in this time of change in the publishing industry, a subscription service for books is something readers would probably love, and publishers would see as an alternative channel and part of the solution to some of the challenges they were (and are) facing right now.

Of course, this is by no means an easy task to do (if it were, it would’ve been done before by a major player), but from our conversations with different stakeholders in the industry, it clearly made enough sense for us to decide to go for it.

If you could tell our community only ONE thing about 24symbols, what would it be?

We want 24symbols to be the Spotify for Books. Be part of it 

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Thank you, Justo, for taking the time to chat with us and we hope you all check out 24symbols. The publishing revolution is here and as Justo said, you should definitely be a part of it!