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Online reading platformsOnline reading platforms and communitiesare Internet based platforms bringing togetherreaders and books, for commercial aswell as non-commercial purposes, invitingreaders to review and comment on books,and allowing publishers and authors to promote theirworks.24Symbols, founded in 2010, is a Spanish platform that hasbeen created to read and share books. The site works withpublishers to provide their ebooks online for free to users,who can read them right off of the app or browser. Thereis nothing to download, and users can skip around as theylike between titles, all for free.Blendle is a Dutch startup offering a subscription servicefor reading magazine and news articles.Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB), a German library, waslaunched in summer 2007 and is to provide free access tobooks, pictures, sculptures, music and other sound recordings,films and sheet music, information on preservingmonuments, virtual exhibitions, archive inventories. As thecentral national portal, it will eventually link up the digitalservices offered by all cultural and scientific institutions inGermany as a means of granting all interested parties accessto the nation’s cultural heritage.Legimi, founded in 2009 in Poland, offers a new approachto consume books. For a monthly fee of less than 5 euros,subscribers can gain access to a library of more than 2,000electronic books or, for the typical ebook price, users canaccess as many titles as they like, sharing a business modelwith Spotify.La Librairie numérique africaine, launched in 2013, is anebook platform dedicated to the African book and moregenerally to the African culture. It is based in Dakar/Senegaland started with a modest catalog of 150 titles.Libranova is a Polish promotional platform for ebooks anddigital reading.Nubico, a Spanish ebook subscription service, launched inSeptember 2013 and co-owned by Planeta’s Círculo de Lectores,provides subscription-based access to thousands ofebooks from major Spanish publishing houses in Spanish,English and Catalán.Skoobe, launched in 2010, is a German consortium led byBertelsmann and Holtzbrinck that specializes in lendingebooks as a “mobile library” via an app in the Apple Appstore or from Google Play. Skoobe is currently lending25,000 ebook titles from over 400 publishers at a monthlyfee of €9.99.Yindo is a Dutch ebook provider that expanded 2011 theirservices to include a new subscription plan. For a flatmonthly fee, users can borrow up to a limited number ofebooks at a time.The Global eBook Report 148