Granted, the stuff isn’t Shakespeare, but who would have ever thought of using technology to get a generation that doesn’t read hooked on books, simply by delivering a story via text message?

The idea behind the app was the brainchild of Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia, two entrepreneurs who launched their company, Telepathic, just a year ago with an application called Hooked.

They did so after raising $1.9 million from investors, some of which included venture capital firms and Lean Startup author Eric Ries, according to Anthony Ha in TechCrunch. And the craziest thing of all is that this ingenious revenue model is working: kids are getting addicted to reading!

According to Quartz this week, Hooked’s service has registered over 1.8 million downloads, primarily from the company’s target audience of 13-24 year olds.  This makes it the top-grossing book app for iOS in the United States, putting it in direct competition with Amazon’s Kindle and Audible Apps.  Astoundingly, it also makes it the top free book app in the U.S. Apple store, too!

After choosing a title from the many available genres (sci-fi, horror, romance, adventure, etc.), you start receiving the story in small doses via text message.  Once you are riveted, the app pauses for half an hour, making you so impatient at the delay that you pay to get your next fix of text.  For $2.99 a week, $7.99 a month or $39.99 a year, you can put an end to these life-shatteringly critical delays.

The weirdest thing of all is that people have been getting hooked.  After engaging in extensive testing of 15,000 people, the founders discovered that the typical person only read 35% of books on a mobile-optimized website, whereas if they are “fed” the selfsame books via text message, they become so attached to their stories that 85% of readers actually finish reading them. Leaving no page unturned, the company is currently in the process of tracking which stories are eliciting the most engagement so it can develop the tales and even branch them out into related stories.

At this time, there are about 200 writers spinning tales specifically for the app, and they must follow specific criteria.  For example, their stories must be addictive and cut to the chase.  Not too much character development, complex imagery or flowery language.

Ha, the reviewer of the app wrote: “While I don’t think it [the story I read] was a great piece of literature, I have to admit that the mystery grabbed me – I kept hitting the ‘Next’ button until I reached the end.”

Source: The Washington Post