Galaxus wants to join the e-book market. Can we pull it off?
At our Hackfest this year, the winning team came up with ideas that’d enable Galaxus to add e-books to its range. But it’s not just about simply making e-books available – it’s about creating the infrastructure around them. We’ll be monitoring the project, originally dubbed Kindle Killers, every step of the way to its big launch or burial. The current status: we’re exploring our options.
July 2026 to present: exploring and developing the PoC
Following the success at Hackfest, work on the project began as July’s heat waves were hitting hard. Currently, the team is conducting a proof of concept (PoC) to assess the feasibility and potential for Galaxus. If and how the idea could be put into practice is still unclear. Instead, the team’s taking an iterative approach. For people (like me) who’re new to the term, Tobias Grundmann, Product Owner of the e-book project, broke it down as follows: «Iterative means trying things out step by step to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s an approach that’s better suited to us than spending months hatching plans behind closed doors.»
During these iterations, the questions below will be explored. Spoiler alert: for the last question, we’re counting on your input in the comments section.
- Is there much appetite for e-books on Galaxus? People in Switzerland are real bookworms. Add to that the other «Galaxus countries», meaning Germany, Austria, France and Italy, and we’re looking at an annual volume of book sales of several billion (printed and digital books combined). This raises the question of whether we want to focus on selling e-books alone or if we should create a whole environment where you buy your books at Galaxus and collect and read them in your digital library.
- Where will the e-books be bought and read? Maybe it makes sense for us to create our own Galaxus e-reader, similar to Amazon’s Kindle, to sell e-books successfully? Or develop our own smartphone apps? The last question, in particular, is giving us the biggest headache of. Why? Because for every e-book sold through an app, Google or Apple get a 30 per cent cut of the sales price. That’s why we’re looking into avoiding apps altogether by potentially selling e-books online and directly on e-readers. The iteration is ongoing in any case.
- We’d love to hear your thoughts: What would you like to see in a Galaxus e-book solution? What bothers you most about your current e-reader, and what do you really like about it? Do you prefer to read on your smartphone or on an e-reader? Would you like to see a Galaxus e-reader, or would a reliable app on a standard device be enough to meet your needs? Anything else you’d appreciate when it comes to reading e-books? Share your requests and ideas with us in the comments. The project team is looking forward to your input.
24–26 June 2026: Hackfest winners
The Kindle Killers e-book project won the Customer Satisfaction award at Galaxus’s 2026 internal hackathon.
The team looked into how Galaxus could build its own e-book ecosystem, complete with e-reader integration. The goal? To provide Swiss customers with a convenient, local alternative to closed systems such as Kindle.
After three days, the team had come up with a prototype that covers the entire process: Buying a book on Galaxus, reading it in your browser and syncing it to standard e-readers. The team’s slogan for this was: «Freaking awesome e-books.» The idea behind the idea was to create an open solution that doesn’t tie you to a single device.
How do you picture Galaxus e-books? Let us know in the comments – the project team is excited to be hearing from you.
News about features in our shop, information from marketing and logistics, and much more.
Show all
