The problem today is that people have no time to read. We also spend more and more time on our phones for entertainment, news, emails, banking – many things that we used to do on a personal computer or offline. It’s easier to read on our phones because everything is in one place; often we’re catching ten minutes on the tube or reading just before we go to bed. Subscription is also becoming a new norm for content streaming, with Spotify and Netflix bringing music and films to people in new ways. Books are no exception, and Bookmate is part of the new wave of services providing ebook streaming via a fantastically designed mobile application. For no more than the price of a single paperback, users can access a library of 500,000 ebooks via a library on mobile, tablet and web that allows them to read online and offline. 

On Bookmate people come for the ebooks but stay for the social experience – you can create a profile and share your favourite books with your friends. We’re really excited to be partnering with BookMachine, and to mark our collaboration BookMachine has created an incredibly useful bookshelf of publishing-related books: https://bookmate.com/bookshelves/MJgQczFz. Together we’re running a competition to give you free access to this bookshelf and the 500,000 books on Bookmate for free. All you have to do is go over to BookMachine’s Facebook, like the latest post, and like Bookmate International’s page http://tinyurl.com/qzkfz9k to enter.