Read a Book in 12 Minutes With Readitfor.me

No time for books? Let Readitfor.me read them for you.

The brainchild of Steve Cunningham, Readitfor.me summarizes the bestselling business and personal development books and presents the key points in engaging videos, workbooks, and other materials that can be viewed anywhere, anytime. Cunningham, who serves as president and CEO of Ontario, Canada-based digital marketing agency Polar Unlimited, got the idea after seeing how little time busy professionals had to read books.

“I was constantly in corporate meetings. In most offices there would be a shelf of business books,” he says. “Since, I am constantly reading to learn I would always ask questions about advice from the books. Almost every time the response would be, 'That sounds great, I haven't read them yet.'”

Cunningham thought, “Why wouldn't I make content with the information from my favorite business books, but speed it up and make it visual?”

Thus, he and his team created the first Readitfor.me video in 2009. At that time, however, Readitfor.me wasn't founded as a business yet. The video was meant to be a piece of social media content for Polar Unlimited; the agency was to use it to start a conversation and interact with its audience. But the response was more than what Cunningham and company had expected – emails for more videos as well as partnership proposals poured in.

So late last year, Readitfor.me officially launched. The freemium service releases one book summary per week. At present, its library includes titles such as The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris, Start With Why by Simon Sinek, and The Flinch by Julien Smith. Cunningham's goal with Readitfor.me isn't just to help people “read” books faster; he also wants them to apply what they've learned in their own business and life.

Readitfor.me already has thousands of subscribers in 55 countries around the world. Fans include Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink.