Over the past decade, three companies have built complete e-book ecosystems with devices, apps, and digital bookstores working seamlessly together—Amazon, Rakuten, and a small company called Vivlio.
While Amazon’s Kindle is the clear leader and Rakuten’s Kobo the obvious challenger, Vivlio is building an open European alternative to these two tech giants. And it proves that you can compete with tech giants with a team of 35, as long as you have a distinct strategy with different goals.
Vivlio was founded in 2011, just a year after Kobo launched its first e-book reader. In the beginning, Vivlio was a side project from Decitre, a bookstore chain from the Lyon area. Just like Barnes & Noble in the US, Decitre wanted to start selling e-books to meet all your reading needs.
But Vivlio chose a different path as it immediately decided that it wanted to create an e-book platform with agnostic bookstores. civilizationone of the largest booksellers in France, became a shareholder.
“The idea was to create a European coalition — well, French at first, but we’re trying to make it European now — a coalition of companies with similar interests, booksellers and retailers of cultural goods, around a French and then a European solution,” he told me. Vivlio CEO David Dupré;
Converting bookstores to e-book sellers
Bookstores existed long before Amazon was founded. But Amazon hasn’t partnered with existing bookstores to deliver books to your door. While Amazon has managed to capture a large market share of book sales, bookstores still exist.
In some countries, including many European countries, fixed book prices they’ve even helped independent bookstores stay afloat. This is why the book industry is still a highly fragmented industry in Europe, with large e-commerce retailers, large bookshop chains and independent shops.
From the beginning, Vivlio bet that the book industry would remain fragmented — creating yet another Amazon would not be a profitable move. Vivlio has signed a handful of partnerships with small and large bookstore chains to power their online stores.
Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
In France, in addition to Decitre and Cultura, Vivlio has also partnered with Decitre’s sister company Furet du Nord and Leclerc. Vivlio also works with the leading bookstore chains in Belgium and Spain, Standaard Boekhandel/Club and Casa del Libro, respectively. So, if you’ve purchased an e-book on one of these sites, Vivlio has handled that transaction on behalf of those retailers.
“The fundamental principle of the Vivlio model, which really sets us apart from Kobo, for example, which has a partnership with Fnac, is that we guarantee two things to our partners. First, the customer remains his customer. That means the customer account is a bookseller customer account, not a Vivlio customer account,” Dupré said.
“Secondly, a very large portion of the sales generated by the Vivlio ecosystem go to the bookseller. In other words, we leave most of the margin to the reseller. . . This is the contractual, legal and operational promise,” he added.
User friendly e-books
While Vivlio only takes a small cut of each e-book sale, it still accounts for the majority of the company’s revenue. But selling ebooks is one thing. You need to provide ways to read these ebooks after that.
The French company quickly realized that it had to sell its own e-book readers so that buyers could download and read their books on a dedicated device. Once again, instead of designing an e-book reader from scratch, Vivlio partnered with an existing manufacturer, Wallet — more on that later.
Selling e-books also represented a technical challenge for the company. The dominant file format for e-books is called epub — even recent Kindle devices now support epub books. So of course Vivlio sells epub files.
However, book publishers often require a protection method (a DRM) to make sure that e-books don’t end up online just days after the official release. While Amazon, Rakuten, Apple, and Google have designed their own DRM layer, most third-party e-book sellers rely on Adobe’s DRM system.
But Adobe’s DRM hasn’t evolved in years. It’s clunky, unfriendly to the end user, and Adobe limits every transaction. “The company literally almost died because of it [Adobe’s DRM] as we had big problems. It accounted for 80% of our customer support requests,” said Dupré.
Vivlio contributed to Readium LCP, an open source DRM solution that does not require an Adobe (or third-party) account. Many companies and public bodies have embraced the LCP Recent years. Adobe’s DRM is still the leading protection system, but this technical move contributes to the open ecosystem philosophy behind Vivlio.
Adding e-book readers to the ecosystem
Vivlio partners with PocketBook for its e-book readers. But these devices aren’t just rebranded PocketBook devices, as the company is adding a layer of software to work with the entire Vivlio ecosystem. For example, you can log into your bookstore account directly on your Vivlio e-reader. All your purchases are automatically synced to your device and Vivlio’s cloud storage.
Vivlio currently has three e-book readers in its product line. There’s the entry-level Vivlio Light e-reader with a six-inch screen and adjustable color front light. There is the improved version of this reader, the Vivlio Light HD. And there’s a larger e-reader called the Vivlio InkPad 4. This one has a 7.8-inch screen.
I’ve been testing the Vivlio Light HD for the past few weeks and it’s exactly what you’d expect from an e-reader in 2023. With a 300dpi display, text is crisp and easy to read. The battery lasts several weeks, even when using the front light. There’s a USB-C port for charging, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, and plenty of customization options for the interface, gestures, and typography.
Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
It’s also worth noting that there are tiny physical buttons on the bottom of the device — physical buttons are unusual with e-readers today. All in all, it’s a small reader that you can take with you wherever you go.
There are other features like a web browser, a calendar and some simple games like solitaire. But in the age of smartphones, e-readers are good for one thing – reading. If you’re an avid reader and don’t want to lug around a bunch of books on your next vacation, this device works extremely well.
Neutral player
Vivlio positions itself as a neutral player in the e-book industry. While Cultura is now the majority shareholder, it still has a few minority shareholders from the industry. For example, Divibib is a recent addition to Vivlio’s board of funds.
Divibib is not a bookstore, it is a company that works closely with public libraries in Germany. As you might have guessed, you can use a Vivlio e-reader to borrow books from German libraries. Once again, this is because digital lending is another form of e-book reading.
“The company is not going to be integrated into a group. The idea is to create an alliance of European partners. Capital is also structured in this way. It is not open to everyone, but when we have important partners, there may be discussions to add them as shareholders,” said Dupré.
Vivlio is well aware that it will never be as big as Amazon or Rakuten. But the company estimates it has hundreds of thousands of active users. It’s not a huge number, but there are only 35 people working for the company.
Most importantly, there is plenty of room for growth. As people begin to look at e-books as a way to supplement their reading habits, Vivlio provides several entry points into its ecosystem. It’s an interesting business case that shows differentiated positioning.
Image Credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
