New eportal on the anvil!

At Delhi Book Fair in New Delhi, Unicorn Books will hold a demonstration of their new portal – bookrup.com – for the publishers. As per Karan Gupta, director, Unicorn Books, “It is a complete system with DRM. We are inviting publishers to submit their ebooks. We only accept epub format with Unicode fonts. We will also accept books in Indian languages. Urdu books can also be read on the system. Enhanced ebooks with audio, video and animation can also be uploaded on the same. This portal will work as an aggregator as well as retailer for ebooks. We will not sell any physical books through this portal.”

This portal will have a priority app for schools where school children can access supplement reading at cheaper rates. The app is currently available for Android phones while the iOS app is under preparation. “It can be used on laptops and desktops as well. For payments, we have tied up with CCAvenue,” said Karan.

So, what makes it different from other ecommerce sites? “In our system, publisher can sell the books themselves. They have a control over pricing and they can service their customers themselves. Our portal also offers an option to give time bound expiry for a book (for sending out review copies),” shared Karan.