'Medium' Buys Social Ebook Platform Glose
- by January 15, 2021
Medium Corp., the self-publishing platform started by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams, this week acquired Paris-based ebook startup Glose SA for an undisclosed sum.
Glose has more than 1 million readers in 200 countries; it carries ebooks
and audiobooks from book publishers such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette and Simon & Schuster. The company has a website and mobile app to reach readers on multiple
devices, Medium said in a blog announcing the deal.
Glose's platform
also resembles a social network — it lets people join reading groups and share highlights and annotations of the books they read. Glose is free to join and urges people to read by setting goals
and tracking their progress. The platform offers a library of free classics that aren't copyrighted any longer and has more current titles for sale in its digital bookstore.
“We’re impressed not only by Glose’s reading products and technology, but also by their experience in partnering with book authors and publishers,” Ev Williams, CEO of
Medium, stated. “The vast majority of the world’s ideas are stored in books and journals, yet are hardly searchable nor shareable."
Medium
reaches 170 million readers, and charges $5 a month or $50 a year for unlimited access to its network of self-published authors. Writers can earn money on the platform based on how much time readers
spend reading their works.
The self-publishing trend has gained greater publicity in the past year with the rise of Substack, a platform that lets writers make money from
newsletter subscriptions.
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