Galaxus is joining the e-book market
The decision to introduce e-books to the Galaxus range was made a few days ago. We’ll be reporting on the project – originally dubbed Kindle Killers – step by step, right up to its big launch.
October 2026: we’re entering the e-book market
It’s official! E-books will be available from us starting next year. Over the past few months, our project team has come up with a basic framework on how to make the idea a reality. The Community provided helpful input we incorporated along the way. A big thank you for your all your ideas and suggestions! These are three key requests we took on board:
- Open e-book system: You don’t want you to be tied to us. Exporting e-books you bought from Galaxus to your e-reader’s library should be as easy as possible. The same goes for importing e-books purchased elsewhere into the Galaxus library.
- Minimal copy protection: The availability of DRM-free e-books, meaning books with no copy protection, was the most popular request in the comments section. While this won’t always be possible, we'll be relying on open standards whenever we can. For example, by using watermarks instead of hard locks.
- Straightforward reading: Our research has shown that people who read e-books find it frustrating quite regularly. The annoyances include glitchy technology, complicated processes and unreliable synchronisation between multiple devices. This is where our solution comes in. We want to provide a simple and reliable reading experience for all. Reading books offline included.
There’s one point we’ve decided not to implement during this phase:
- No proprietary e-reader: We want to focus on selling e-books online and enabling customers to read books on existing e-readers or in our reading app. This is where our strengths lie. Furthermore, our market research and your comments have shown that most people who read e-books already own an e-reader.
We’ll be launching our first e-books next year and will be sharing the exact date as soon as it’s confirmed. Our product development team's currently working on technical solutions and ironing out the details of our new offering. Watch this space for updates.
July to October 2026: exploring and developing the PoC
Following the success at Hackfest, work on the project began as July’s heat waves were hitting hard. Currently, the team is conducting a proof of concept (PoC) to assess the feasibility and potential for Galaxus. If and how the idea could be put into practice is still unclear. Instead, the team’s taking an iterative approach. For people (like me) who’re new to the term, Tobias Grundmann, Product Owner of the e-book project, broke it down as follows: «Iterative means trying things out step by step to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s an approach that’s better suited to us than spending months hatching plans behind closed doors.»
During these iterations, the questions below will be explored. Spoiler alert: for the last question, we’re counting on your input in the comments section.
- Is there much appetite for e-books on Galaxus? People in Switzerland are real bookworms. Add to that the other «Galaxus countries», meaning Germany, Austria, France and Italy, and we’re looking at an annual volume of book sales of several billion (printed and digital books combined). This raises the question of whether we want to focus on selling e-books alone or if we should create a whole environment where you buy your books at Galaxus and collect and read them in your digital library.
- Where will the e-books be bought and read? Maybe it makes sense for us to create our own Galaxus e-reader, similar to Amazon’s Kindle, to sell e-books successfully? Or develop our own smartphone apps? The last question, in particular, is giving us the biggest headache of. Why? Because for every e-book sold through an app, Google or Apple get a 30 per cent cut of the sales price. That’s why we’re looking into avoiding apps altogether by potentially selling e-books online and directly on e-readers. The iteration is ongoing in any case.
- We’d love to hear your thoughts: What would you like to see in a Galaxus e-book solution? What bothers you most about your current e-reader, and what do you really like about it? Do you prefer to read on your smartphone or on an e-reader? Would you like to see a Galaxus e-reader, or would a reliable app on a standard device be enough to meet your needs? Anything else you’d appreciate when it comes to reading e-books? Share your requests and ideas with us in the comments. The project team is looking forward to your input.
24–26 June 2026: Hackfest winners
The Kindle Killers e-book project won the Customer Satisfaction award at Galaxus’s 2026 internal hackathon.
The team looked into how Galaxus could build its own e-book ecosystem, complete with e-reader integration. The goal? To provide Swiss customers with a convenient, local alternative to closed systems such as Kindle.
After three days, the team had come up with a prototype that covers the entire process: Buying a book on Galaxus, reading it in your browser and syncing it to standard e-readers. The team’s slogan for this was: «Freaking awesome e-books.» The idea behind the idea was to create an open solution that doesn’t tie you to a single device.
How do you picture Galaxus e-books? Let us know in the comments – the project team is excited to be hearing from you.
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