Medium acquires E-book company Glose

Glose is a platform where users can buy and read books, then share notes and highlights with friends.

American online publishing platform Medium has announced its acquisition of the social-based eBook company Glose, which is a platform where users can buy and read books, then share notes and highlights with friends.

According to The Verge, Medium’s CEO Ev Williams said that the company “looks forward to working with the Glose team on partnering with publishers to help authors reach more readers.” Once the integration is complete, Glose’s library won’t be included in Medium’s $5 monthly and $50 annual subscriptions. Glose CEO Nicolas Princen said, “The vision is to create an experience where you can go from one to the next.” He added, “You can read an article and then just one-click purchase a book that connects to that content if you want to go deeper.”

As per The Verge, there are a few ways Glose/Medium integration could go about this. First, Medium could show people books written by the author of the article they are reading. Going even further, Medium could also find books about the article’s subject and show those to readers who want to go deeper.

Even though how much the acquisition cost Medium isn’t public, it does provide a revenue stream for the company outside of its subscription service. While it may be a struggle to convince people to pay to read shorter-form articles, many people are already accustomed to paying for books.