(2025-06-30) Library Startup Briet Wants To Revolutionize Ebook Sales Not Licensing

Library Startup ‘Briet’ Wants to Revolutionize E-Book Sales, Not Licensing. With publishers and libraries at odds over e-book licensing’s long-term expense, hold times, and ethical concerns, a new platform called Briet is pursuing an open-access approach. Briet invites publishers to sell their e-books to libraries outright, providing universal, perpetual access. Several independent publishers including PM Press, Punctum, Sideshow, and Silver Sprocket are on board.

An initiative of the Brick House publishing cooperative and the Flaming Hydra collective of journalists and artists, Briet (rhymes with plié) is named after, and an homage to, the late French librarian Suzanne Briet. Notably, the open platform arose not long after judges decided in favor of publishers in a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, determining that the IA’s scanning of copyright-protected print materials and lending of the digital copies constituted copyright infringement and was not fair use as the IA contended.

Flaming Hydra cofounder and journalist Maria Bustillos, a Brick House member who has been instrumental to Briet’s philosophy and construction, said the collective began to build the digital platform about 18 months ago, even as the IA case was still in court. The app is a “response to the crisis in e-book licensing and the increasing encroachment on the rights of librarians” to determine what goes into their collections and afford both print and digital books, Bustillos said. “I’m really concerned for the future of archiving and the preservation of digital ownership rights for libraries.”

In addition to Bustillos, Briet’s designers and developers include founding sponsor Paul Ford, of the enterprise AI platform Aboard; tech lead David Moore, who established the nonprofit daily newsletter Sludge; and software developers Jacob Ford and Matthew McVickar. “We had a fantastic librarian helping out over the summer, Heather Neumann,” Bustillos added, and Flaming Hydra contributor Jennie Rose Halperin of digital-rights organization Library Futures "generously contributed guidance, introductions, [and] education.”

Bustillos expects to make the platform available on Thorium Reader, using the latest iteration of Readium software, which powers the web-based e-book windows already familiar from the IA Open Library.

Bustillos notes that in the decision against the IA’s scanning and lending model, which she reported on in the Nation and elsewhere, much depended on print books and e-books being defined as separate media rather than equivalent formats. “When you read the pleading in the Internet Archive suit, they say that e-books are a different product,” she said. “The Netflix-ification of books has been the goal.” Briet pushes back on that, with publisher cooperation.