Koreans are curious people from a young age and want to explore the world of knowledge through books and rich content. Libraries, book stores, and book clubs are very common spaces in all cities, with lots of Koreans found reading different types of literature.
The reading penchant has also moved on to the online versions with bookworms consuming a lot of online books. This trend has encouraged many Korean authors to upload online versions first. If the book becomes a bestseller, then the paper copies are made available in book stores. Now bookstores in South Korea have a specific section for online bestsellers. So what are the best online books and content suppliers in the country?
Many Korean startups have successfully expanded the reader base in a short span with the online book and content apps. Let’s check out a few of the startups and get to reading.
RIDIBOOKS is the most popular e-book platform with a lot of variety of content available. There are e-books, webtoons and web novels, animations, articles, and news on the RIDIBOOKS platform. It has features that enrich and ease reader experience.
RIDI Select is a premium service that allows unlimited book access. RIDI Paper offers news services, RIDI Laftel is about animated content. It also has an interesting ‘fold the end of the book’ feature and a special section for IT news. No doubt, when it caters to a vast audience, this startup platform is famous for its bestseller
Bookjam is an e-book cloud platform company that converts all digital contents in the world into high-quality e-books and distributes them through various channels. Bookjam’s cloud platform allows users to purchase e-books, keep them for life, and share with others.
The startup offers its services and technology to publishers and authors as well. Publishers and writers can quickly and easily produce high-quality e-books using BookJam’s technology and sell them effectively through various markets linked to the cloud created by BookJam.
Braincolla’s ‘iink’ & myfan.ai’ : The Seoul-based tech startup that works on the principle of ‘Brain’ plus ‘Collaboration,’ has developed the ‘iink’ app that helps book lovers pick the perfect book through special machine learning technology. The algorithms of the app match readers with books based on their taste.
It’s another app, ‘myfan.ai’ collects and shows the readers’ feedback activities about the author’s work. This app allows authors to know their market and target audience better. The company has collaborated with Yes24, Korea’s no.1 online bookstore, and will promote the app through them. For the myfan.ai app, the startup is affiliated with Joara, a leading web novel company, and only Joara writers can use it for now.
Trevari is not a bookstore but an online book club platform that is subscription-based. Subscribers can join any of the various book clubs on this platform that holds meetings in person at various sites run by Trevari.
Trevari aims to encourage reading culture and bring people of similar tastes together. Trevari is five years old and already has more than 45000 members and 8885 different book clubs registered.
Publy is a popular content subscription service for working people. So if you are not an avid bookworm, but still love absorbing rich content, then Publy is a good platform . It has a variety of collections, from web books to interesting articles available at a monthly subscription.
The platform also has a translation of international content from sites like the New York Times and Financial Times. It is a quite popular reading platform among Korea’s startup CEOs, entrepreneurs, and VCs.
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