eBook Distribution: Zola Books Bets On Curated Lists | eBook Publishing World | Scoop.it

From Portfolio.com: "...Zola Books, which has launched its app in beta today, is planning to disrupt the disrupters, wagering its success on its belief that human curation works better than algorithms when it comes to recommended reading.


The Zola Social Reader plans to bring a human touch back to e-books by bringing book critics, publishing houses, and bookworm friends back into the book-buying process.


It will work on Amazon's Kindle Fire, Barnes &Noble's Nook, and Apple's iPad as both a native app and an HTML5 app, an offering that undermines all three gadget maker's competitive edges by giving owners of their devices a new choice for where to buy books. And for an e-book industry estimated to be worth $7 billion by 2015, that’s a pretty bold move.


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Zola’s digital storefronts... Not only will independent bookstores be able to set up their own digital storefronts, but authors, publishers, and other owners of content will be able to set the prices.


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Like other e-book distributors, Zola’s Social Reader uses algorithms to generate quick recommendations based on user preferences, but unlike those distributors, it also gives publishers, authors, and friends the opportunity to curate lists of interesting books and highlight or comment within any book for all their friends to see."


Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2012/06/05/zola-books-concept-disrupts-apple-and-amazon-ebook-models