With the constantly changing technology, you will find nothing untouched. Paper books are no exception as they are being replaced by eBooks. eBooks have become the go-to means for offering education. An eBook uses an eBook reader, mobile phone, or computer to display texts in the form of a book. Market for eBooks is thriving because of people loving to read on the go. So, let us find out how you can create your own eBook app and what the market offer you.
Pros and Cons of eBook Apps
If you are a niche bookseller or publisher or a group of authors, you will find many benefits of having your app like:
- Directly interacting with your audience
- Making any changes to your app yourself to improve the user experience
- Easily marketing to a specific niche audience
- Choose the most advantageous monetization model
- Set up and tailor exclusive mechanics suitable for your monetization model, content, and method of connecting with your audience
There are certain drawbacks also of not using a third-party service to sell your books: Let’s have a look:
- You’ll hardly get noticed if you don’t do professional marketing.
- Developing your own eBook is expensive and takes time as well
- It takes lots of efforts and money
So, we can say that creating your own eBook app like Kindle has both advantages and disadvantages. When you hire app developers India to create a reading app for you, you should discuss all the above mentioned pros and cons in detail with them to ensure that you make the right decision always.
How to make a Kindle-like eBook app?
1.Select your niche
It is wise to begin with one niche only until you’re not a publishing house having a wide audience. You can choose a niche of your choice but it should have the potential to attract lots of readers. It can be defined by any theme, setting, genre, age, or gender.
2. Find your audience
You need to carry out a detailed research to find out your targeted readers. Ask yourself the questions below to get a reader’s persona.
How much will they read monthly?
Do they prefer reading digital books?
How frequently do they read using an app?
What other reading apps do they like?
How much money can they spend on reading your books?
3. Select a monetization model
You have two ways to monetize your app. One is to take a percentage of the books that you sell and another is to offer a subscription. eBook apps like Kindle use a mix of these systems. Kindle reading app offers unlimited reading with its monthly subscription from its particular list of magazines and books and it also sales books in the traditional way.
Important Features A Bookstore Ebook App Should Have
If you want your eBook app for Android or iPhone to stand the test of the time, it should have the following features in it:
Store Listing
This is the first and most important feature of a Kindle-like app. In fact, if you have an online store, you need to have product listings. What is more, you need to make your listings as unique and user-friendly as possible. They should have simple-to-find buy button and engaging descriptions.
Audiobooks
In the recent times, audiobooks have become very popular. They are well-liked by students and adults who wish to read while they walk to their school or office, drive or go in a public transport. But that is an expensive feature so as an alternative you can use text-to-speech conversion feature. With this, you can also provide a selection of different voices for your readers. Test-to speech can be beneficial for users as it avoids tone and enunciation issues.
Search, filters, and categories
Users should be able to navigate the eBook store to get what they needs whether it is an author or a book. You should have organized tags to make your users find new books in your niche. Based on your niche, these tags can be anything from genre and sub-genre to story setting and book rating.
Reader functionality
There are some features that reader need to read eBooks. These features include bookmarks, dictionary, book navigation, notes and highlights, sync progress, font adjustment, page adjustment, night themes for eyesight protection, and more. Adding these features to your eBook app can make it stand out from the rest.
Downloading books
You should let your users download books on their device so that they can read them even without an Internet connection and this, in turn, will save lots of online traffic.
User Library
This is another important feature that you should add to your eBook app. This ensures that your app has an organization system for the books purchased, downloaded and read by the readers. If you hire app developers India, they will recommend you to have an option for navigating the library by genre.
Gamification
If you want your users to keep coming back, you can add the latest gamified element to the eBook app as it will help boost user engagement. You can also offer some rewards to make your readers read more and more.
Payment functionality
A clear feature that you want for your users is the payment option for paying for their subscription or books. Integrate a great payment gateway to offer safe way of online payments. This payment gateway should be good enough to offer protection for users financial data.
Content Uploading
Your app can also include a feature to upload content. This feature will help you eliminate the needs for freeing your device storage space, non-store reading app, and will make the users interact with your app in a better way. You can also let authors submit their books for reviewing by uploading them on your app. Thus, this feature has a lot of advantages both for the app owner and the users.
Author’s Bio:
Working as CTO at Rushkar Information Technology LLP. Having 9+ years of experience in IT industry, I’m dealing with major technology platforms – Java, C#.NET, IoT, Raspberry PI, etc. Served 300+ local, international satisfied clients. Photography and Designing are something I do for creativity and mind exercise.
