Where readers
find writers.
A discovery app for indie books with 87.5% royalty and ad-free reading.
Built for the people who care about the work, not the platform.
On Spine right now.
A Millennial’s Paradigm: Homeownership Post Covid
by Sapiox MG, LLC
"False equity vs total homeownership"
1% of platform fees
fund carbon removal.
Spine commits 1% of every platform fee to Stripe Climate, which funds frontier carbon removal companies — direct air capture, mineralization, ocean alkalinity, biochar. Not offsets. Removal.
The contribution will flow automatically with each transaction once paid sales launch. Stripe publishes a quarterly transparency report.
How Stripe Climate works ↗None of this is
inevitable.
Different choices are possible. Spine is built around them.
Read the full manifestoThree things,
one app.
Spine isn't a Goodreads. It isn't a KDP. It isn't an Audible. It's all three of those, but rebuilt around the relationship between the writer and their reader.
A discovery layer
No author can pay to rank higher in discovery, be featured, or otherwise promote their book on Spine — not now, not ever. Books surface through reader signal alone: which titles are sampled, saved, finished, and returned to. The full algorithm is part of what's being built. Spine may show third-party ads to fund the platform; those are clearly labeled and never influence which books you see.
Today, books are listed chronologically. The reader-signal algorithm is in development — see what's built.
A reading venue
A full e-reader with table of contents, customizable typography, four themes including sepia, and persistent reading position. Highlight passages in three colors and attach notes — your annotations survive author edits. Save books to your library and read free sample previews before deciding.
Live readings and an audiobook layer with synchronized audio and text are on the roadmap — not yet live.
A publishing platform
Publish a book in five minutes — import from Word or PDF, set your price, no approval queue. When paid sales launch, authors will receive 87.5% of every sale, at any price, with no exclusivity required. Your reader list belongs to you.
Sales via Stripe are the next major build. Books are listable and readable today; transactions begin when payments launch.
Books on Spine.
Structural
commitments.
Not slogans. These will be encoded in the Terms of Service as binding obligations — the kind of thing the platform cannot change quietly. The legal text is drafted and being wired in.
Authors cannot pay to rank higher. Publishers cannot pay to feature books. Discovery is purely reader-signal driven, with the algorithm weights published. Authors must build a real audience the real way.
The email list of every reader who saved or bought your book is exportable by you, anytime. We do not gate or rent access to your audience.
Publish on Spine and KDP and Smashwords and your own website. We do not require any exclusivity, ever. The author chooses where the book lives.
1% of every platform fee is contributed to Stripe Climate, funding frontier carbon removal companies. Quarterly transparency reports published by Stripe.
Reading is a private
act of attention.
Spine exists for the readers who care about it being protected, and the writers who want a place where the writing matters more than the marketing.
Begin →