New feedbooks site. How does it work?

[John F]

I was looking at the new feedbooks site, and was interested in how it works.

It appears that they loan books. I started to see what I could learn from the site, but it is soooooooo sloooooooow that I gave up.

Attached are some screen shots.

For those that have used the new site, or have looked into it, could you provide some details as to how it works? Do you pay per loan, is it a subscription service, is it a free, ... ?

Looking at the web page, I don't see anything to actually borrow a book, only excerpts.

[tomsem]

Feedbooks was acquired last year by Cantook. The current site seems a work in progress, for example Promotions page is empty.

Cantook seems to to be building a platform based on open source Readium. The apps (see capture) let you read ePub, PDF, audiobooks (just as with Thorium Reader). The apps support OPDS and 'public libraries'. So it seems this is one 'library' that you can access with the apps and probably web browser at feedbooks.com. I don't see any provision for syncing between app instances.

It probably does not cost much to make some set of titles available for borrowing like any public library, especially since it seems likely nearly everything will have a wait list, assuming that feature even exists (59 day borrowing, some only a single copy). Especially if the purpose is to eventually start some subscription service later, or just to have some traffic while they build out infrastructure. Right now it just seems to be a placeholder.

Can you set up app for borrowing from Overdrive or any other library system? or is that just aspirational?

I might check it out more next week but am too busy now.