Libreture
250MB? That isn’t many books, is it?
Actually, it’s potentially 100+. More on this later.
If your reading overtakes that limit and you want to upload more books to your collection, you can choose to upgrade to a paid plan that suits you and your books.
So, why the change?
Why we killed the 30-day trial
At the point of launch, my initial thinking about Libreture was that it was a service like other online businesses.
No-one wants to use a paid service until they know it works for them, so a 30-day trial seemed like a good idea. Users could upload a few books, decide if the service was worth paying for and away we go.
But I missed something important.
Uploading just a few of your books doesn’t give you the real freedom that Libreture is designed to provide. But no-one is going to upload all their books if they are unsure about the use of the service. We’ve streamlined the uploading process, sure, but it’s still relatively time consuming.
As is maintaining a collection.
Sure, Libreture is Software as a Service (SaaS), but if you get down to the real point of it Libreture is a ‘collection tool’. It isn’t a service like any other online business, not at all.
Libreture is like a cross between Dropbox and Goodreads, specifically for DRM-free e-books from indie, small and self-publishers. It exists because there’s literally no other single online space dedicated to readers where you can safely store e-books from these sources. None.
Goodreads is dedicated to readers and books, but you can’t store your books on it.
Dropbox is space for storage for any type of file, but doesn’t care if that file is music, books, documents or your latest plan for global domination.
Libreture combines both these things, with the aim of providing for the storage and access needs of DRM-free e-book readers while allowing those people to indulge in ‘collection’ habits. We’re talking the creation of reading lists, making notes and recommendations, sharing their activity, and flagging and moving books around. You know, geeky book stuff.
Without a satisfyingly full collection of books and time to enjoy it properly, there isn’t much point.
So the 30-day trial is now dead.
Better than a trial (and still free)
Libreture’s solution to the problems of a trial period is to launch a FREE plan.
It includes 250MB of storage for your e-books, which equates to approximately 100 books. Maybe more, maybe fewer. Create your free account and take your time adding your books. No rush. No pressure. No deletion in 30 days.
You can use all the geeky collection features, make your library private or public as desired, and really decide if Libreture is the place you want to store your DRM-free e-books. Until you hit your storage limit and decide you want more, you don't even need to add your card details.
The free tier is perfect for those with smaller e-book collections. Any Libreture account is like an e-book archive and most importantly it means that if an e-bookshop closes and deletes your purchases, they’re still safe and sound right here. If you only need a few hundred megabytes, simply create your free account, upload your books, and you're done.
If you’re a voracious reader with an appetite for hundreds of e-books and you know that DRM (Digital Rights Management) doesn’t help you keep your book collection safe in the long run, we’ve got a little more to offer you ...
I'm gonna need a bigger bookshelf!
What if you have LOADS of e-books, and comics, and graphics-rich titles…?!
One of the reasons we don’t specify the number of books that can be held by 250MB is that often graphics within the files can take up an unexpected amount of storage space. For most e-books, this just means that the high-resolution cover art may be very large, but there are other classes of e-books jostling for space on our digital shelves … comics.
If, like me, you read e-comics as well as ridiculous numbers of ordinary e-books, it won’t make sense to keep those somewhere else. They’re all just books, after all. In the same way that the physical copies would be kept on your bookshelf, it should be possible to keep digital comics alongside your other e-books in Libreture.
But 250MB could just be a drop in the ocean for comic book readers.
Digital comics are much, much larger files. To accommodate this and the needs of readers devouring several hundred e-books each year, Libreture has launched a selection of tiered plans, based on the storage requirements of different groups of readers.
Soon after the tiered plans launch, you’ll be able to upload and store PDF, CBZ & CBR books. Because these formats don’t support the metadata commonly found in e-books, which Libreture uses to display details about your titles, we’ll introduce the ability to edit title and author details. This means you’ll still be able to catalogue these new formats properly, and do all the geeky stuff to your heart’s content.
This change will also mean you will no longer receive upload errors when adding a book that is missing its title or author information. You will be able to correct this information after uploading the book.
Thank You!
Libreture is changing and growing, but a group of fantastic readers helped it get here.
We’re thanking everyone who joined Libreture on the original subscription plan with the promise that you can keep that subscription for as long as you like: £2.99 for Unlimited Storage. It’s now called The Founders Plan.
Thank you for supporting Libreture when it needed you the most. I hope you enjoy the new features.
To everyone considering joining Libreture on the next step of our journey, create your FREE account today, and get 250MB of storage for your DRM-free e-books.