Publishing startup Slicebooks this week announced that is has secured a round of seed funding from the Ingram Content Group, via the distrubutor’s ICG Ventures Inc. Developed and owned by EarlyAccess, Inc., Slicebooks' seeks to enable publishers to “compete with the Internet” by making their content available “whole, sliced and remixable, and how, when and where consumers want it.”
In addition to receiving seed funding from Ingram, customers of Ingram’s CoreSource platform will also have the option of having their files uploaded to Slicebooks. “It’s easy for any publisher to upload content to us for slicing,” said Slicebooks CEO Jill Tomich in a statement, “but those publishers who have their content on the CoreSource platform can simply request files be sent to Slicebooks.” Tomich added that 90 publishers to date have already signed up to use Slicebooks.
Slicebooks seeks to unlock the potential for publisher content to be marketed and sold in new ways. Using the Slicebooks’ interface, publishers can “remix” front and backlist titles into new packages, and chapters and sections can be priced and sold individually online. Scheduled for launch in the third quarter, Slicebooks will also debut an e-book “Remix Widget,” which will give consumers the ability to “drag-and-drop sliced content from any number of books to instantly create their own custom e-books.”
The technology, company officials say, will have many applications, from allowing educators to create coursepacks, to travelers who can create custom travel guides.
