VimpelCom relaunched the Beeline Books service – Kommersant

The Beeline Books digital book service is being relaunched and will become available not only to the operator’s subscribers, but also to all users, a VimpelCom representative told Kommersant. The company did not disclose investments in the relaunch and promotion of the application. For a subscription to books and audiobooks, the user will have to pay 20 rubles. per day, only for books – 12 rubles / day, only for audiobooks – 18 rubles / day.

The service will also allow you to download your own books to read without a subscription; support for CarPlay and Android Auto is also built-in, VimpelCom clarified. Currently, almost 300 thousand pieces of content are available in the application, including audiobooks. At the same time, part of the service’s library was received from Liters, the rest of the content was purchased directly from publishers, the company says. Comics, including South Korean ones, may also appear on the platform, VimpelCom does not rule out the possibility. The operator hopes to capture up to 10% of the digital book market by 2026, says a source familiar with the company’s plans.

Restarting the VimpelCom service was a logical step, says Boris Makarenkov, general director of the literary platform Litnet and the publishing house House of Stories. “Last year was due to a strong decline associated both with the departure of players such as Storytel, and with the shutdown of the Visa and Mastercard payment systems, which led to a drop in the number of buyers,” the expert noted. After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, payments in the App Store and Google Play stopped working for the Russian audience, which in particular led to a slowdown in the digital book market (see Kommersant, July 27, 2022).

Mr. Makarenkov added that to gain a subscriber base, the service will need both exclusives with authors and a convenient application. At the same time, the most expensive items of expenditure will be advances for content and advertising, he noted.

Yulia Yurasova