By Edward Nawotka
“There are two approaches for driving interest in a book’s online,” says David Mandelbrot, founder of NextRead.me. First, there’s the proliferation of social discovery sites, GoodReads for example, where you can see what you’re friends are reading and what they’ve read. Then there are sites like BookBub that are helping consumers find deals on books, which are driving purchases of books, we sit somewhere in between. We’re trying to produce a combination of both of those approaches, but are ultimately more powerful.”
The company promises to send you an email to let you know when books you have expressed an interest in go on sale.
So, how does it work?
“You login with Facebook, and once you do that you are immediately presented with a very social book discovery experience. You see what books your friends have liked, are reading and have read before. We combine that social information with price information to deliver email notices to you for books that you have indicated you are interested in and have gone on sale.”
Currently, the company is just tracking Amazon and will only send out notices when the retail list price of a title, in either print or a digital edition, is offered at 50% below it’s list price. Mandelbrot, who previously worked as VP and General Manage of Yahoo’s media and entertainment business, says he plans shortly to extend the service to covering other retailers.