The background
“Kitaab”, Urdu word for “book”, is a brainchild of “Ideal
Ideaz”, a software house founded by a group of friends, all sharing the same
vision to do something impact-ful for the society as well as themselves.
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Urdu is world’s 3rd biggest language* (mixed with
Hindi by some analytics) and is written right-to-left. Spoken primarily in
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Middle-East and by the large community of Asian people living in US, UK, Canada and Australia. The language offers a
deep literary heritage and is considered as one of the sweetest languages in
the world. Unfortunately, the literature is dying because of the declining
trend of book reading which in turn is caused by rising prices of paper books
and decreasing affordability of people. eBooks can revive the book reading
habit by offering books which are,
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Free (belonging to
public-domain or copyright free)
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Paid but very cheap as
compared to paper-back editions
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Easily accessible online
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Easily readable giving the
best eReading experience
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Encouraging amateur authors
to publish their works free of cost
- Encouraging professional
authors to sell their books to a much larger audience around the globe
Though, the concept of eBooks exists in the society but only
in a form that people scan books, create static PDFs and upload. The proper
eBook creation process is not followed because there is no such platform yet
which can display right-to-left languages’ text as easily as left-to-right’s.
Furthermore, interface of the platform in the same language is also needed.
Even further, the eBook creation process is lengthy and requires considerable
time, money and effort because of composing the manuscripts in digital form and
then using development techniques to generate optimized eBooks in the proper
epub format. Therefore the concept remains limited.
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The statistical analysis of such resources offering scanned
images as books show that the people do want to read eBooks but they are
helpless.
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A static PDF can be “read”
but not “enjoyed”
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PDF books are almost
impossible to read on mobile devices
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There is no dedicated
mobile app for Urdu eBooks reading, having the interface language in Urdu too
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Available collection is not
very vast, specially the classic literature
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In scanned images, you do
not have the customization features offered by eBooks (font style, size, color,
line height, spacing, background color, day mode, night mode etc.)
- Due to piracy, authors and
publishers remain hesitant
So we develop Kitaab
Kitaab is a complete eReading and ePublishing solution for not only Urdu but all right-to-left (RTL) languages.
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Scope includes,
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Free Android and iOS app
optimized for RTL eBooks reading
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ePublishing mechanism by
which Urdu books will be made available in industry standard EPUB format
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Generating a vast library
of FREE eBooks belonging to public-domain and copyright free
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Digital Rights Management
(DRM) system to handle piracy on copyrighted books
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Platform for publishers and
authors to sell their books in ebook form
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Translation of other
languages masterpieces to Urdu, thus bridging the societies
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Primary interface language
as Urdu, secondary language English
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English eBooks can also be
read with as much ease as Urdu
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Exciting social sharing
features not yet offered by any eReading app
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Expanding the horizons to
include other RTL languages like Arabic and Persian
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We need your support!
Kitaab is a mega project and despite of having all the
necessary vision, experience and skills, we lack just one thing, the financial
resources to carry out the full scale development and building the free online library of Urdu classic books. At our own, we have successfully completed the ver 1.0 for Android. Our major cost heads are,
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Development of Android app
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Development of iOS app
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Acquisition of
public-domain books and their conversion to digital form. This is a significant cost head which has raised the cost of overall project, but is as crucial as the development itself.
- Developing an owned DRM system
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Developing a web platform
where users can submit their ebooks to be uploaded on Kitaab
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Online marketing to create
awareness
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Offline marketing in
universities, literary circles, events, book fairs
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The challengers!
Optimizing for an RTL language on machines and softwares
which all work in LTR format was the foremost challenge which has been overcome
with unique algorithms and innovative techniques. Generating a significant free
library of ebooks to start with is quite a comprehensive challenge which
involves considerable money alongside the effort. The current DRM systems for
ebooks offered by providers like Adobe are too costly to be integrated and will
kill the concept of providing cheap books to the people of under-developed countries. Thus developing a new and owned DRM
system is another challenging task for which some algorithms have already been
planned and need to be field tested before deployment.
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Contribute to a whole culture!
By contributing to this project, you will help more than 900
million Urdu speakers around the globe (stats by Encyclopedia Britannica) to read their favorite books on mobile
which will in turn,
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Help to revive the
literature of a centuries old language
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Literature educates
societies thus producing more tolerant, talented, creative and lively
individuals
- Encourage authors to write
more as their creativity is delivered to more people
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If we do not meet the funding goal, then our development pace will be significantly hit. Library building costs are almost as high as the development and is one of the primary success factors of this product. No classic library - no Kitaab!
Current Status and Launch Plan
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We have launched Android based first version on Play Store with a limited number of books
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Public Domain Library is being worked upon and is the only bottleneck at the moment. Due to our limited resources, this phase is eating much time and effort.
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DRM and Paid Books category will be included in second version and is dependent upon the funding we raise.
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iOS app development will be started as soon as we raise a certain amount of funds to bear the cost.
Download Kitaab
You can download Kitaab from Play Store on your Android phone now.
Help us realize a DREAM
Whether you know Urdu or not, a contribution to this project will be a contribution to a better educated society of millions of people living in every corner of the world. If you know any Urdu/Hindi speaker around you then do share the word with him and ask him to get ready to download Kitaab on his mobile.
Stay tuned to our official website
Our official website is
Currently showing pre-launch version. It will soon display a section of Online Library, Acknowledgements, Publish your book section and a book discussion social forum.
Q. I don't know Urdu, is Kitaab for me?
Yes, Kitaab fully supports English, Arabic, Persian and other languages' ebooks too. Kitaab's interface is available in English as well. Along with our own Urdu library, we have connected Kitaab to English online libraries like Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks etc. Once we are done with Urdu, then we will expand to Arabic and Persian as well and make interfaces available in those languages.
Q. Don't you think you are asking too much?
Absolutely not, as Kitaab is a complete end-to-end solution. It's not only an ereader, not only a library, not only an epublisher, not only an online book store..it is all of them at once. We have to do it all because these all are linked and are meaningless in absence of other. The library building requires acquisition of books, requires manpower to convert them to digital form, requires time as it is a laborious process hence the cost of library built-up phase is almost equivalent to the development of rest of all modules together. In fact, such a project would take much more finance to be developed if it were based in US or UK etc. Our costs are far lesser because we are Asia based.
Q. What can I do if I cannot fund?
Even just 1 penny of yours will be another step towards changing a whole cultural trend. But if you can't then you can definitely help us by sharing the word with your friends, sending us comments to encourage, and showing us your commitment to download the app once it is launched. We will still be grateful to you.
