A Berlin Startup Gets People To Buy More Books, By Reading Less

Berlin startup Blinkist is getting people to buy more books, by reading less. Business titles like Getting Things Done and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are classics in the world of self-improvement. But time has increasingly become a precious commodity. Business books now compete with blogs, and for many, Thinking Fast and Slow and other titles, aren’t exactly summer reading. Shortage of time is what Blinkist is banking on. The digital and audio book subscription site takes non-fiction and business books, and boils them down into digestible highlights and summaries. Each book takes just 15 minutes to read. Call it Cliffs Notes for grown-ups. A blink is a key message from the book, which you can read with the blink of an eye on a Smartphone or tablet. One book consists of 10 blinks, on average.