by Pulkit Arora VAS company ShortFormats has announced that it will sell Indian literary classics such as Choker Bali, Kabuliwallah and work of authors such as Rabindranath Tagore as audio books and e-books offline, in multiple languages. The company which has launched an offline app store, Biscoot in October last year currently sells songs and movies, apart from letting people watch trailers of latest movies. Pricing These new offerings by the company will be moderately priced. For e-books, users need to pay Rs 30 for two stories and for nine stories the amount that will be charged is Rs 100. The audio books are slightly expensive with the price of one story pegged at Rs 30. Five stories will come at a cost of Rs 100 How it Works The users can download and install these books on their mobile phones as applications which can then be run without any internet connectivity. Like with most eBook reading apps, users will be able to create bookmarks, set alarms for reading times and can even take notes. While listening to an audio book, the listener has the option of rewinding up to 30 seconds in case something is missed. Competition Amazon, Flipkart, Skoolshop.com, learnpedia.in, among others, offer e-books and some offer an e-book app as well. There’s also Vriti and thedigilibrary.com, although, they only seem to provide books for entrance exams. In February 2013, Google added an e-books section to its content marketplace Google Play in India, allowing users to purchase e-books to their mobile phones and tablets. Google also offers an separate app for magazines, but this feature is not available…
