A look at Shortcovers.com

While poking around O'Reilly's TOC blog, I came across a review of a pretty interesting new site. Or service. Product, maybe? It's called Shortcovers, and it's from the people at Indigo Books and Music, a large Canadian retailer. Essentially, it's an iPhone app (though one would assume that they will also be looking into making their service available for other smart phones) that combines the content delivery of a iTunes with the community orientation of a site like goodreads. When the site goes live next month (their iPhone app is still making its way through Apple's approval process), after getting the app you will be able to download the first chapter of any number of books for free. Chapters beyond the first will be available for a fairly low price--about 99 cents. As Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal points out, that will be a real boon for people looking for just part of a travel book or a business book. You will also be able to buy the whole book through Shortcovers, or even order the print book along with (and often bundled with) the eBook. eBooks bought through Shortcovers will typically sell for about half the publisher's list price, according to Mossberg.

In addition to buying eBooks, people will be able to use Shortcovers to recommend books, talk about them with their friends, rate them, and even make "mixes" of chapters of different books and upload their own writing. It's this community focus that intrigues me most about Shortcovers. People like to talk about the books that they like, and combining book selling with discussion groups seems like a very sharp move. A community of readers who chat with each other and refer books around is exactly the sort of thing that anyone in the book business should be happy to see, and I'm guessing that Shortcovers will do well because of it.