Ketab-e

ith about 300 million speakers worldwide, Bangla is the seventh most-spoken native language and the sixth most-spoken language by total number of speakers of the world [source: Wikipedia]. The Bangla language has evolved over one thousand and three hundred years and has produced a huge corpus of rich literary works, which essentially has shaped us, our culture, and our identity as Bengalis.

However, in this era of digitization, the most unfortunate truth which bothers us is that a very small percentage of those literary works are digitized. Ketab-e, as a Bangla e-reading platform, is an initiative to keep a record of this rich heritage, being a part of it at the same time. This e-book platform is publishing new Bangla e-books, distributing it, and even archiving the important books on various subjects written in Bangla.

One of the objectives of this platform is to make Bangla books accessible to the global Bengali diaspora. Another very important goal this platform aims to achieve is to archive the Bangla little magazines, which had always played its role as a budding stage for future mainstream authors or even a challenger to the mainstream itself. Ketab-e is a first-of-its-kind digitization initiative of Bangla little magazines in the EPUB format. The platform is also publishing important works of new authors as well as of already established ones.

The slogan which Ketab-e often uses is: ’Here Technology Meets Literature’. At Ketab-e, technology plays an important role in this large-scale digitization venture. Here, readers can purchase books from any device through the Ketab-e web portal, and read them with the ebook reader which is inside the Ketab-e app. The ebook reader has many interesting features to provide a far-reaching reading experience to Bengali readers. For example, there is an embedded Bangla dictionary inside the ebook reader which can come handy while reading classical literature. Ketab-e also provides a portfolio page to its authors and publishers which helps them to organize and promote their books through the Ketab-e web portal.

Altogether, Ketab-e is and will be a unique destination for the global Bengali reading community. With a constant focus on innovation and quality, it will definitely create its own footprint in the digitization initiative of Bangla literature.