In 60 minutes, this book will self-destruct…

Nobu Su, the serial inventor and Taiwanese shipping magnate, made it his Mission: Impossible to revolutionise the publishing industry using cutting-edge, real-world technology. Special agent Jonathan Freeman investigates.

Nobu.store, the new e-publishing platform, was launched last week to much fanfare. Observers described it as a “financial breakthrough for publishers” and said it had the potential of “revolutionising the way people, everywhere, consume literature”. In an increasingly competitive, innovation-driven industry, that’s high praise indeed.

The platform – the first of its kind in the world – aims to tap into the $14.5billion global ebook market by giving publishers and authors the opportunity to rent, rather than sell, their titles. That’s good news for consumers - who can hire ebooks, text books, academic journals, e-comics and e-magazines for a fraction of their RRP – and great news for content creators whose work may otherwise go unsold.

But the site doesn’t stop there. Mission: Impossible-style technology causes rented literature to ‘self-destruct’ after a predetermined period of reading time. Little is known about the patented technology other that it pre-encrypts documents with a self-timing ‘fuse’. Once the fuse ‘detonates’, all traces of the PDF document are removed from the desktops, smartphones and tablets on to which it was downloaded.

This so-called “time-stamped” technology is (correctly) touted as a major breakthrough in the fight against copyright infringement and piracy. But it also benefits consumers by freeing-up valuable memory on their digital devices after the content has been consumed.

Publishers and authors are free to specify the rental price and the period of time – between two and 20 days - before their titles disappear. They are also able to sell their titles in ebook and print-on-demand hard copy. Nobu.store receives a commission on each rental, much like Amazon. Uniquely, all products can be read free-of-charge (using the Nobu Reader app, a prerequisite for all Nobu downloads) where they will remain for up to two hours before self-destructing.

Its creator, Nobu Su, is no stranger to the world of creative innovation. He is the billionaire chairman of global shipping giant TMT and the author of two exposes into the 2008 financial crash – The Gold Man From the East and Dynasty Escape. But Nobu is also the founder of OceanNet, a Taiwanese-based software company behind the self-timing technology. It is understood that he first secured a patent for the “timestamp” publishing tech in the early 2000s and that he has spent the intervening years researching the market.

It is too early to tell if Nobu.store will transform the publishing industry in the way its proponents claim. But if the self-destructing technology works as it should, the possibilities are endless - and explosive.

Q&A with Nbu Su, founder of Nobu.store

Nobu.store, the new ebook rental platform, is making waves in the publishing industry. We sit down with its enigmatic creator, the Taiwanese shipping tycoon, Nobu Su.