Smart is the new sexy: how startups are changing the book industry
This is a guest post by Camille, from Glose, one of our startups at Facebook’s Startup Garage at STATION F. To submit a guest post write to press@stationf.co.
When was the last time you read a book?
I mean a real book, with more than 200 pages. Remember? Maybe you’re the type of person who often tells yourself that you should read more. And you’re right! Reading is good for the brain, the soul, in addition to all the things you can learn in a book, of course. If like most of us you’re struggling between your addiction to Netflix, your lack of time, and inspiration to choose a good book, we have good news for you: the book sector is evolving and startups are creating a new reading experience, which is more interactive, more social and better adapted to your lifestyle.
From papyrus to ebook: the revolutions of reading
Before exploring the future of reading, let’s have a look at its History with a capital H. Paper was the first big innovation, or more precisely papyrus, invented by the Egyptians. This new “hardware” allowed people to move with their manuscripts, travel, share content and ideas. The second revolution was about the content itself: the creation of punctuation in the text, in 29BC century. This innovation — which seems completely normal to us — helped people read faster, smoother and understand nuances. Then we started to read in silence and were able to focus on a text, internalize, train ourselves to read, like Saint Augustin.
A few centuries later came the biggest revolution in the history of reading: the invention of printed press by Gutenberg in the 15th century. It meant that knowledge was now accessible to everyone on printed books. Six centuries after, our good old paper printed book is still the champion in the industry of reading, good job Gutenberg!
The launch of the first “e-readers” in the 2000s was quite a revolution for the publishing industry: people could download thousands of ebooks without moving from home. Unfortunately, the ebook was designed as a simple dematerialized copy of a book, and sold almost at the same price as a printed one in France. Many readers are still doubtful and don’t see the added value of ebooks. Today in France, ebooks represent only 7% of the market. We can do better, right?
A new era of reading is coming
Well, let’s stop being dramatic. We also have good news for reading! Thanks to technology, we can now read augmented and interactive content, read and connect with our friends around books, help people with difficulties like dyslexia to read… A new era of reading is coming!
Let’s have a tour of the talented startups at Station F who are reinventing both reading and the book industry.
Everyone can become an author with Chat Stories and Calamagui!
Self-publishing platforms took off in the last few years, like the writing application Chat Stories, developed by the startup Glose. On this app, you can read and write text messages stories on your smartphone. You read a discussion between two characters, telling a story full of suspense. You’ll see if you try, the app is quite addictive! Hundreds of stories are submitted every week by aspiring authors, mostly teenagers and young adults. Today, even kids can write their own books thanks to the startup Calamagui! It’s easy: kids write their stories, illustrate them with drawings, and then a real book is printed and sent at home.
A new reading experience to encourage and help read more with Glose
At Glose, we are using the best technologies in order to reinvent the reading experience, to help the young generation read more. How? By making reading more accessible and social: on your smartphone, thousands of ebooks at your fingertips. On Glose, you can collect your favorite quotes and share them with your friends, comment a paragraph with a video or a picture, and be inspired by the books read by your network. In schools, the platform is used by teachers to read collaboratively in French class and motivate kids to read, as you can see in this video.
Glose technology also helps kids with disabilities to read: they can choose a typo adapted to dyslexic and dyspraxic children, increase font, choose the background color to adapt the layout and read more easily.
Interactive books for kids with Wakatoon…
Before kids learn to read, they draw in coloring books! The startup Wakatoon turns children’s colorings into cartoons thanks to their application. A great activity to help kids develop their creativity! I’m sure you would have dreamed of having this app when you were little :)
… and tools for adults to protect their content with Blasty!
And when you’re a grown up working in the publishing industry or writing books, you want to protect your content against copyright infringement. That’s what the startup Blasty does for authors and publishers. Their system is 100% automated, it finds the web pages that share books without permission, and removes them.
As you can see, at Station F we have great startups shaping a new reading experience! And it’s just the beginning. Scientists started to study the effects of reading on our brains: they discovered the power of silent reading to learn at school, found ways to measure our reading competencies, showed that access to books had an impact on poverty and that reading had a strong positive impact on our brain, with the development of cognitive science.
Stay tuned! And read books :)
