London-based Perlego is aiming to tackle one of the biggest pain points for聽students with its e-book subscription service for textbooks.
With 15,000 students joining the platform since its launch early last year it鈥檚 been growing 53 per cent month on month. It聽also boasts 900 publishers on its books, including the likes of Wiley, Pearson, and the Oxford University Press.
The site offers a free version which includes a range of public domain books like Shakespeare and Plato聽as well as聽a premium version at 拢15 a month, discounted to 拢12 for students, which gives access to the site鈥檚 full library of 220,000 titles.
24-year-olds Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis co-founded the site, which聽provides access to additional material like reports, whitepapers and journals on top of textbooks.
鈥淥ne of my biggest pain points as a student was I鈥檇 buy a book worth 拢200, read two chapters then never use it again,鈥� says CEO Van Malderen.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to build the world鈥檚 online university library.鈥�
Having found initial discussions with publishers hard going, Belgian-born Van Malderen says that they are now coming round to the new model.
鈥淎t first they were saying 鈥榞o away we never want to hear of you guys鈥�,鈥� he says.
鈥淥nce we built up our offering that changed. We offer them data collection, which they love, and provide data on who鈥檚 reading what and how long is being spent on a specific book.
鈥淧erlego is at its core a textbook channel but there鈥檚 so much more around it, and it allows them to recover their market share from pirated content.
鈥淎 huge problem in the textbook market is that roughly 30 per cent of the total sales are cannibalised due to second-hand purchases.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e doing is to monetise every user, which is how we managed to onboard all these publishers.鈥�
The model also allows Perlego – which means聽‘to read’ in Latin –聽to be more competitive on price by cutting out the middleman in retailers, removing the mark-up of bookshelves or retail space. It also doesn鈥檛 cost publishers anything to join.
鈥淚t鈥檚 so scalable,鈥� says Van Malderen.
鈥淵ou could access any student in the world because all the books are available online, which I think is pretty cool.
鈥淔or students a great argument is that you might be studying economics but also interested in history or coding.
鈥淎t no additional cost on Perlego you can dip into that content.
鈥淥ut of the 10 books a student needs we might only have six today but we have so much more on top which makes all worth it.
鈥淚t鈥檚 incremental revenue for publishers and incremental learning for students who, if they had to pay 拢60 for the book, probably wouldn鈥檛.鈥�
While the site doesn鈥檛 allow students to download the content to read offline yet, the site has been gaining traction, and won a 拢500,000聽seed round last year.
Van Malderen and his team believe it could be the answer to a struggling market.
鈥淧ublishers are in crisis because anyone can self-publish, so how major publishers position themselves is by saying 鈥榳e are the premium content out there鈥�,鈥� he says.
鈥淗ow they鈥檒l differentiate is that they won鈥檛 publish 10,000 textbooks anymore, they鈥檒l publish only the best-selling ones.
鈥淚t鈥檚 similar to the way we saw other industries go like Spotify or Netlfix.
鈥淲hat is the value of the record label? It鈥檚 finding talent and packaging that.鈥�