Nominated
EXCELLENCE AWARD: CONTENT
YouScribe is a digital library service aggregating hundreds of thousands of eBooks, audiobooks, newspapers, magazines, and academic documents. Around 2000 publishers from all around the world share their catalogue on YouScribe. Thanks to partnerships with telecom operators (MTN, Orange, Moov, Inwi, …) around the African continent, users can subscribe to the library via SMS and micro billing plans (5 RAND/Day). YouScribe reached the one million subscribers’ milestone in Africa in August 2022. YouScribe overcomes the obstacles to the difficult physical book distribution, the low affordability of paper books and audiobooks, the limited local production, and the weak number of libraries and bookshops, by providing a quality all-in-one digital service to students, families, reading lovers … and more. Thought for the African continent, the whole service is accessible in English, French, and Arabic and is very low on data consumption, allowing for an optimized reading experience. Users can pre-charge their books in the App thanks to an Offline feature to enjoy it outside of home, or in zones where the internet is unstable or not available. With publishers from all around Africa and the world – Pan Macmillan South Africa, Jonathan Ball, Botsotso, Deep South, … – the content ranges from literature to academic publications, children’s books to business references. The digital library offers almost two million titles and a great representation of local publishers and native languages. Our Editorial Team is dedicated to sourcing the best content and editorializing the rich catalogue to propose the best books to subscribers. The reader is at the heart of the service, with content tailored to each country, personal recommendations, notifications of release from their favorite authors and a constant updating of the catalogue with more than 200 new titles every day.
YouScribe allows people all over the continent to read everywhere, for leisure or education, through a customized offer and micro billing payment, and aims to make reading more accessible to all.
https://portal.waspa.org.za/upload/waspies/31_2023_YouScribe%20a%20digital%20library.pptx