Subscribe
Sign in
Glose for Mobile — A social reader for ebooks, now on Android
34
Replies
Great to see you again in this thread - I remember your feedback on the iOS app. Glose team sends its best to Souncloud team - we're fans!
Having had been in the publishing space for an exceeding (excruitiatingly) long time, the truth is that the primary driver of adoption in these types of apps is catalog. The great thing is that most large publishers will now allow access to the back catalog (and some front), but they are also providing that access to everyone.
It would seem with this product, your hope is the social aspects will be your driver of adoption. Given Goodreads and now even Kindle (and a few others) have socialized the annotation, how do expand on the concept to drive adoption?
@eriktorenberg @micah And one of the things we can do is work with Product Hunt to power their book club ;)
I see you have thousands of ebooks to read for free. What's an estimate figure on that?
I just signed up for an Oyster Unlimited trial, and I'm a big fan of their model. The books in Glose's bookstore are considerably cheaper than Oyster's- but do you have complete ownership of them after purchase? Are they available to you offline once you've purchased them? Will they be pushed into my iBooks library so I can access them on all devices when I'm not connected to the internet?
I love the idea of social annotations while reading books - particularly difficult or philosophical work from authors like Dostoyvesky - but one of the reasons I'm switching to Oyster Unlimited, instead of just buying ebooks the traditional way, is because I probably won't reread most of the books I purchase. For that reason, the limited free ebook selection on Glose leaves me hesitant. But, I think for people who value the social aspect more than volume, Glose seems like a solid fit. Going to keep checking in with Glose :)
@stttories Hey thanks for your comments and questions!
- Yes on Glose you get complete ownership of the books you purchase. You can read them on all platforms and forever really. Also you can start reading any book for free to get a feel for the book before you make a purchase decision. With subscription services you don't own the books so you have to continue paying the subscription if you want to keep acces I think.
- About reading offline : on Glose we store the last 10 ebooks you've read (that means the last books you've opened) so that you can read those online on our apps.
- Free ebook selection : yes please tune in often as we are adding new free ebooks all the time and expanding our collection every week. Also, consider the free reading on paid books : on Glose you can really get deep into a story before having to buy the book.
- If you're an avid reader who reads like 10 books a month you should probably go for a subscription service. You take the risk of not finding the books you want since they distribute only half of the big publishers. Also the ebooks you will get there are only back catalog so you won't find the new releases you hear about in the press or the New York Times best sellers. (Back catalog means that the books have been out for 18 months at least). But if you don't care about novelty that much and wont mind paying every month and sometimes not finding the book you are looking for - subscription sounds good for you. I know I don't like paying for a service that won't have the only few books I'll be ready to commit too, namely new releases (the books people are talking about), but I'm sure some readers fit the subscription profile.
- About rereads : you value access more than ownership and I understand that. I know I like to keep my book collection and I like the idea of going back to past reads for inspiration. Also, I just don't like the idea of losing everything when I stop paying every month. Books are not movies to me : they are something I really want to own, keep, share etc...
Please keep on checking in with us! Maybe you will like a mix of different services in the end! We really appreciate your time and support here!
@arlogilbert Thanks for the heads up on everything - we really welcome your feedback on what we do right and what we do wrong as well ;)
Hey guys, I'm the founder and CEO of Glose - the social reading platform for ebooks, available on the web and iOS. We are launching GLOSE on Android today - youhou! To celebrate this we are offering 30% OFF ALL OUR 500,000 BOOKS TO ALL PRODUCT HUNTERS. Get the discount by accessing our exclusive Product Hunt landing page and pack your app with all the New York Times best sellers and the best tech & start up books around.
Glose is a social reading platform for ebooks, where you can discover, purchase, read, and engage with over 500,000 books. We make reading more social, interesting, and efficient by providing you with ways to engage with like minded readers through shared annotations in the margins of the books you like. It's like an online bookclub, where we put reading on steroids.
- We packed the bookstore with all the best tech & start up books like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs' new biographies, essays by Ben Horowitz, Paul Graham, Eric Ries, Alexis Ohanian... Get 30% off all of that.
- We have all the new releases from your favorite fiction and non fiction authors, from Malcolm Gladwell to Stephen King. New York Times best sellers and everything.
- We are open (and begging) for feedback from so please feel free to share comments and questions!
You know what's cool?
Reading.
@nicoprincen I upvoted you, not only to congratulate you, but also to thank you for the shoutout. Congrats!
Thanks! I read your book and really liked it. I dropped a few anotations too https://glose.com/book/without-t.... It's one of the reads that inspires my team right @aenehc.
@alexisohanian @nicoprincen
Hey @micah @eriktorenberg thanks for your comment. It is true that catalog is a big driver - I'd actually say it's the minimum to qualify in the eyes of the consumer/reader. If you want people to trust you and stick with you you just need the books. We've been working on that a lot, going from 5 to 600 publishers on board in the last few months - with both back catalog and all the frontlists, and now readers find what they want on Glose.
The social aspect is important to us - it's part of the vision to connect people through books and build great communities of readers who share opinions, ideas, and stories through books. Our frustration is that books are the only form of content that people can't really share or socialize through - they are absent from people's conversations on Facebook and Twitter for example - when they could power so many interesting talks. Goodreads does a great job for reviews and people socalize there "on top" of the books. We give them an opportunity to socialize and engage "through" the book - and use the momentum of their reading activity to share their inspiration with others.
But the social aspect is not enough to get where we want to be, so we are innovating with new ways to distribute ebooks, help people discover the content they like differently, and get the authors involved as well. There is more coming in the Glose project and I hope we keep you interested!
@vbarnett323 We are looking into it! There are cool things to do with Instagram - and Pinterest as well. What would you like to see us doing?!
@nicoprincen I am a very visual consumer, just got your app:) and I wanted to share a book with my 13 year old daughter & the only social media she is on is Instagram. She and her friends have a book club at school and they all share quotes from the books that they make into pictures. If there was a way to share and then for the people seeing it could buy the book immediately. She already reads an average of 2 books a week and is costing us a fortune, but she got her addiction to books from me. She and her friends read on an app called WattPad. Personally I am more likely to buy from Pinterest or an invite from within the app, but the consumer demographic that I see with the most potential growth is on Instagram. Can't say if that will lead to sustainable sales, but if you can implement at a low cost, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Just my opinion:).
@vbarnett323 That sounds like great advice! We do that with Facebook and Twitter - when readers share a book quote to FB or TW we automatically convert the quote into a beautiful quote card. It's like a beautiful picture with a quote inside that people love. We'll look into doing the same kind of thing on Instagram I guess!
Wattpad is a great place to start reading! It's all self-published content, with a lot of fan fiction - so it's great for that demographic. Readers easily become writers in places like that - which is great! Let her try Glose when she wants to read published books - I hope it goes well! Thanks for the advice - will do! We appreciate your time and support
Just started reading on android using glose. Like the interface really and the annotate feature is very interesting. Great job guys!!
@akshay2104 Thanks a lot! We appreciate the warm support here! Please make sure you share any negative feedback as well - always looking to improve. Happy reading!
@nicoprincen @akshay2104 been reading since morning a few issues I would like to highlight ( I use an android btw):
a) When I try to post an annotation it gives me a message saying I am offline but then it posts the annotation multiple times.
b) Also when I highlight something the top bar with share option disappears quickly so I have to tap on the annotation again.
c) It restricts us to horizontal scrolling, I am used to vertical you could let the user choose ( maybe you do but I couldn't find it)
Haha thanks @clem_guillon I know you've been waiting for it for quite some time! Check out the start up books in there - good stuff. And we've got a book for you here : https://glose.com/book/run-or-die-2
I really like Gose (mostly because Goodreads looks awful) although I am often confused by the UX:
- When I rate a book, the rating always disappear when I reload the page.
- "I read it" vs. "I've read it" are confusing.
- Some books won't go away of the "Now Reading" list after clicking "I've read it"...
Maybe this is just me but it should definitely be more intuitive. Hope this helps!
@nspehler Hmmm... I hate to say you're right! Thanks for all this - I agree we need to improve the interactions around the book and the booklist management as well. Work in progress - should be better very soon.
SO yes this does help! Thanks for your time and support - and happy reading!
Robomart