Romanian investor Dinu Patriciu and journalist Sorin Rosca Stanescu have recently launched an online bookstore under the brand Corect Books, which will sell only digital books. The investment in the project was of EUR 100,000, but will reach EUR 2 million for a wider project which includes a media portal as well.

The digital bookstore aims at reaching 10,000 book titles on its virtual shelves, all from the Romanian literature pool. Buyers will receive the books in pdf format but the bookstore plans to add other format options in the future.  The investors hope to sell around 100 titles a day and make the project profitable in up to two years.

The site books.corect.com is currently in its beta version and allows pre-orders. It is part of a wider online media project started by the two investors under the Corect brand (Corect means Fair in Romanian). It will include a news portal called Corect News, which will include six niche online publications and which should be launched at the beginning of November.

The investment in this project is of around EUR 2 million. Dinu Patriciu holds the majority package in the company which runs the project (60 percent), while Sorin Rosca Stanescu, the remainder of the shares.

This is not Dinu Patriciu's first investment in the media. He owns the Adevarul Holding company, which runs several media titles, such as daily Adevarul with its local editions Adevarul de Seara, the business magazine Forbes, magazine Foreign Policy, among others. The idea of selling exclusively digital books is a novelty on the Romanian market. Dinu Patriciu has also previously said it was planning to try out the paid content options for its media websites, a move inspired by the development of the online media market in Western Europe and in the US.

Romania-insider.com