Bookboon

Bookboon

Type of business	Online, private company
Type of site	eBook publishing service
Available in	Multilingual
Founded	1988 (as Ventus Publishing)
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
No. of locations	11 international locations
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Kristian Buus Madsen (CEO) Thomas Buus Madsen (COO)
Industry	eBook Publishing
Products	Free eBooks
Services	eBook Downloads, Advertising
Slogan(s)	Download free books
Website	www.bookboon.com
Advertising	Yes
Registration	Not required
Launched	2005
Current status	Active

Bookboon is currently the world's largest^[1] online publishing company of eBooks, with over 50 million downloaded eBooks in 2015. It is focused on publishing student literature for engineering, IT and business students as well as short and practical business books.

Bookboon was founded in Denmark in 1988 under the name Ventus,^[2] and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark and London, United Kingdom.

As a global eBook publisher, Bookboon offers a wide range of over 900 textbooks for students and 600 eBooks for business professionals in many different languages.

Bookboon's over 900 academic textbooks freely available to students on their website are written by academics and are financed by employer branding ads which are placed in the books and which allows them to be downloaded for free.^[3]

Students from all over the world highly benefit from Bookboon's textbooks, amongst others in Africa where many students do not have the resources to buy books. Bookboon has become their perfect solution for easy access to quality literature.

Bookboon also offers a selection of 600 eBooks for business professionals that can be purchased directly or accessed via Bookboon Premium – a subscription service for private users, launched in 2014.

The subjects covered by Bookboon’s student textbooks^[4] include economics, engineering, IT and the natural sciences, while its professional eBooks focus on topics including personal development, marketing, management, accounting and computer software skills. Aside from Bookboon Premium, 2014 was also the year Bookboon launched its Corporate eLibrary,^[5] an internal learning solution for companies.

History and background

The company started as a family business called Ventus in 1988 in Denmark. At that time, Ventus focused on publishing student textbooks written by an in-house staff and freelancers. The owners of Ventus had two sons named Thomas Buus Madsen^[6] and Kristian Buus Madsen. In 2005, the two brothers launched Bookboon. Kristian Buus Madsen was inspired to start Bookboon while he was a university student: one of his classmates borrowed a copy of a textbook from the school library, made 50 photocopies which he sold to his fellow students in front of the classroom. Kristian quickly realised the strong demand students had for free or cheap textbooks. Soon after, while the brothers were working on the launch of Metro,^[7] a free Swedish newspaper, they developed an innovative business model: free digital books financed by a few in-book ads, with a limit of 15% advertising space per book. The advertisers were to be companies looking to promote their career opportunities towards students and professionals.

Initially, Bookboon focused on free academic textbooks and business eBooks for the Danish market. In 2006, the company expanded to Sweden, followed by Germany and the Netherlands in 2007. In 2008, Bookboon expanded to the United Kingdom and started publishing eBooks in English.^[8]

Bookboon currently publishes its eBooks in the following languages: English, German, Dutch, Danish, French, Swedish and Norwegian and has recently published titles in Finnish, Spanish and Czech.

Bookboon in the media

In 2011, Bookboon was featured in BBC News' Webscape segment technology show Click presented by Kate Russell,^[4] This helped to broaden the popularity of Bookboon’s free textbooks for students. Bookboon was also featured on Kate Russell's blog.

In 2012, The Guardian's Higher Education Network published an article entitled "Academic publishing: The essential checklist for ebook authors", mentioning Bookboon.^[9] Bookboon was also featured in an article by the German newspaper Die Zeit.^[10]

In 2015, Bookboon was featured in newspapers such as the German Handelsblatt and one of its Swedish books was mentioned in the Swedish Metro.^[11]

In 2016, Bookboon expanded its market to African countries, especially in terms of employer branding. This was reported by the Danish newspaper business.dk, the German channel Deutsche Welle^[12] as well as CNBC South Africa.^[13]

Categories and popular eBooks on Bookboon

Textbook categories:

· Accounting

· Career and study advice

· Economics and finance professional · Engineering

· IT and programming

· Language

· Marketing and law

· Natural sciences

· Statistics and mathematics

· Strategy and management

Business book categories:

· Accounting and finance

· Career management

· Communication and presentation

· Engineering

· Entrepreneurship

· IT Management Try literary critici m by Dr Samuel johnson · Job search and CV ·

· Marketing and sales

· Office programs and software

· Personal glopment

Corporate Solutions

Bookboon offers various solutions to organisations.

1. eLibrary solution: Bookboon’s corporate eLibrary helps organisations further develop their employees by providing a selection of business books that they can read through an intranet.

2. Lead Generation: companies can generate leads from their websites by implementing Bookboon’s business books.

3. Employer branding: universities and companies can place ads in Bookboon’s textbooks and business books.

See also

References