Reading e-books should be a very social experience — like many other things in life. People should be able to share their reading notes, their reading progress, and their bookmarks with their friends. It should be like a virtual reading group where people can move through books together, discussing the content along the way.
The social-reading subscription service Bookmate says it has 1.5 million monthly readers who feel this way, most of whom are in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other Russian-speaking markets. The company says it’s taking a $3 million funding round to bring the social-reading magic to more parts of the world in 2014, namely Turkey, Scandinavia, and Latin America.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1480148,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,entrepreneur,media,mobile,social,","session":"D"}']The investment is coming from Russian consumer electronics retail giant Ulmart, which will gain the opportunity to sell e-books through the Bookmate site.
Currently, Bookmate’s library contains more than 400,000 books from 300 publishers globally. Bookmate says the e-book market is already mature in the U.S. and U.K., but such consumption is just starting to gain traction in less developed markets.
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