If Rooster works as intended, you’ll never have an excuse not to read a book again.
Plympton, a digital publishing startup with a focus on serialized fiction, unveiled a new iPhone app on Monday called Rooster, which curates suggestions for books to read and then pushes the book out to users in timed installments. In essence, it functions like a book club for busy people.
Yael Goldstein Love, a novelist and cofounder of Plympton, says the idea for the app came directly from the most common feedback the team heard to their startup. “So often when we tell people what we do, people say, ‘I wish I had time to read. I don’t have time to read anything longer than a blog post,’” she says.
SEE ALSO: Entitle Takes a Different Approach to Netflix-for-E-Books Market
The team did some research and opted to divide books into 15-minute installments, based on the average person’s commute time. Users can then schedule installments to be sent out at particular times and days, though there is always the option to go ahead to the next installment if you find yourself with another 15 minutes to spare.
The book selection will be a mix of contemporary works and classics, starting with I Was Here by Rachel Kadish and Billy Budd by Herman Melville. Goldstein Love says there is no plan to bring in more mainstream writers in part because of the licensing deals those would require and in part “because those are easier for people to find” elsewhere.
Rooster is currently available by invite only and the app costs $4.99 a month. As with other recent e-book apps like Oyster, Rooster users do not technically own the books they read. Instead, they have access to books in the app for as long as they maintain a membership.
Plympton was founded in 2012 by Goldstein Love, former New York Times writer Jennifer 8. Lee and ex-StumbleUpon engineer Jacky Chang. The San Francisco, Calif.-based startup has seven employees and has received funding from an A-list group of investors, includingReddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, early Facebook employee Andrew McCollum and Quora cofounder Charlie Cheever, among others.
This article originally appeared onMashable.
