New digital platform lightens the syllabus – - At least when it comes to carrying it around…
In October, Omnibus wrote about former AU student Camilla Hessellund Lastein, who was going to create a kind of Spotify for study books. Now her beta version of the subscription service Lix is ready to sell e-book versions of study books and offer a range of features that will allow students to work on syllabus digitally.
"It's really weird!" That’s Camilla Hessellund Lastein’s first reaction to seeing how the idea that she has been developing for years manifest itself and become reality.
"But there is still a lot of work to be done, and a lot of product development, before the idea is fully fledged," she quickly adds, before continuing:
“It’s only a beta version of the Lix subscription service that we’ve just launched.
We’re working very hard to iron out the small errors and defects and to add new features and titles," she says.
30,000 titles on the shelf
So far, Camilla and the other employees behind Lix have managed to get access to 30,000 titles.
"We’re particularly strong on international books for medicine, bioscience, economics and physics. We also have 300 Danish titles on the way," she says.
Presently, you need to download Lix to see what books they have on the shelf. But Camilla promises that it will soon be possible to search for titles via the website.
Inspired by Spotify
The business idea behind Lix leans heavily on established digital subscription services such as Spotify. Lix makes the e-books available to subscribers for the cost price of the books. The company earns its money from the actual subscription.
READ MORE: Former AU student will create a Spotify for study books
At present, Lix operates with two types of subscriptions: Lite and Premium. Lite is free of charge and only gives subscribers access to buy e-books at cost price. Premium costs DKK 29 per month. In addition to access to e-books at cost price, Premium subscribers also get a search function and a tool to write and save notes in the books, as well as highlight important passages and share their notes and highlighting with other students, for example in a study group.
With Premium they also get access to various free, open source articles and books, as well as receiving offers from Lix partners.
"You can try Premium free of charge for a month. After that, you can choose to continue as a Premium subscriber, or you can instead continue with the free Lite subscription," explains Camilla.
Attracting attention in the publishing industry
From being an entrepreneur with a good idea, Camilla Hessellund Lastein is now CEO of Lix and someone who is attracting the attention of the publishing world. Lix has also been singled-out by Dansk Aktie Analyse (Danish Share Analysis, ed.) as an entrepreneurial company that is worth keeping an eye on.
"Right now it’s us and Mofibo. We’re the one’s who are shaping the digital book market. I’ve just given a presentation at a conference for Scandinavian publishing companies," says the young company director self-confidently. She sees this as just the beginning.
"What we’re launching now is just the foundation. It amounts to 1/20 of what we want to do with the company."
- Read more: http://lix.tech/#top
Translated by Peter Lambourne