Copia To Open e-Bookstore/Cafe

By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 3/8/2010

NEW YORK — E-reader maker Copia will supplement its upcoming hardware release with a social-networking site designed to inspire digital readers to buy and discuss books.

Copia introduced six e-readers at International CES for June shipment and will have TheCopia.com site up and running about a month before the hardware hits stores, said Anthony Antolino, senior VP of Copia parent DMC Worldwide.

The Web site, under development for two years, represents the area that the company believes holds the most longterm promise for digital publishing. Copia. com will contain an e-book and print book store with a very strong social-networking component, he said. “We thought an experience is missing from the way people now buy e-books,” Antolino said. “We wanted to connect people together.”

Much like Facebook or Twitter, with which Copia.com will interface, the new site lets readers develop a group of friends to share thoughts and information on books. These books can be either digital or print and they do not have to be sold by the site. Copia will also weight the thoughts and ratings of a user’s friends when recommending a book, unlike Amazon, which bases its recommendations on genre, author and books sales, he said.“

Amazon doesn’t know who your friends are. Copia shows books in common with your friends,” he said.

This connectivity will primarily be PC based, but Copia’s hardware will also tap into the portal.

The site has also taken a different approach to book shopping. Antolino said the site tries to mimic the experience of browsing through a bookstore.

When a search is done for a type of book, it appears in the center of the screen. It is surrounded at the 3, 9, 12 and 6 o’clock positions by books that are directly related to the searched item. The books at 1, 7, 5 and 10 o’clock are either somewhat or indirectly related. This gives a person the opportunity to “wander” around the store and not be stuck under a specific subject.

All of Copia’s 300,000 e-books are hardware-agnostic and use the ePub and Adobe DRM systems.