About ReadMinute
ReadMinute is the mobile-native quote-first reading format for non-fiction books. Each book becomes 50-200 swipeable pulses: one verbatim quote (with page reference so you can verify it), one one-sentence insight that puts the quote in context, and one concrete action you could do today to put the idea into practice. Open the app on a phone, swipe through 30 pulses on a commute, walk away with the spine of the book in your head.
The bet behind the format: you don’t need to read every page of a non-fiction book to learn from it. You need the right two hundred sentences — the ones the author actually thought hardest about, curated by someone who read the whole thing, presented in a format your phone is good at. Most non-fiction summary services either give you bland chapter outlines (forgettable) or full book replacements (cheating yourself). Pulses sit in the middle: short enough to read on the bus, sourced enough to trust, action-oriented enough to change how you act this week.
Every pulse links to the source book on Bookshop.org and Amazon. If a pulse hooks you, the next step is buying the book — not finishing the pulses. ReadMinute is a doorway to deep reading, not a substitute for it.
Who’s behind it
ReadMinute is curated by Paulo de Vries — solo founder, based in the Netherlands, part of a small library of independently-operated reading and reference sites under the AceVault.org umbrella. Reading non-fiction for 15+ years. The pulse format came directly from frustration with traditional note-taking: what actually survives a year after I read a book? Not the chapter summaries I dutifully wrote in Notion. The handful of quotes that changed how I think about something specific. Pulses are an attempt to ship that experience to other readers without the year of forgetting in between.
ReadMinute has no investors, no team, no growth-hacker — just one person reading carefully and shipping what survives editorial cuts. That’s a feature, not a bug: it means the bar for what counts as a pulse-worthy quote stays high, and it means the editorial voice stays consistent across every book.
Editorial independence
ReadMinute is reader-funded. Revenue comes from Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates affiliate commission when readers buy books we link to, optional display ads on category and editorial pages (never inside the pulse-reading interface), and an optional Audio Pro subscription that adds spoken-word pulses. We do not accept payment to feature a book. We do not take publisher sponsorships, paid placements, or undisclosed gifted-book reviews. If a book is on ReadMinute, it is on ReadMinute because we’d recommend it to a friend who asked “what should I read on this topic?”
Curation discipline
See our methodology page for the full editorial process and the source-handling rules that govern every pulse. In short: every quote is verbatim with a page-reference (or chapter-and-section reference for ebooks without stable pagination), every insight is our synthesis written in our voice (never paraphrased copy that masquerades as a quote), every action is a try-this-today suggestion grounded in the chapter the pulse came from. No AI-generated filler ships unedited; AI tools are used for first-draft scaffolding only, and every word that reaches a reader is reviewed by a person.
What ReadMinute is not
We are not a piracy site — we host short curated quotes (covered by fair use for review and commentary purposes), not full book texts. We do not host PDF downloads of copyrighted books. If a publisher believes a pulse exceeds fair use or wants pulses removed, our contact page covers the takedown flow. We are not a Blinkist clone — pulses are shorter and quote-first, designed for swipe-then-buy rather than replace-the-book. We are not a book-summary service that paraphrases at length.
Get in touch
Email: [email protected]. We respond within 24-48 hours on weekdays. See the contact page for the full list of what we can (and can’t) help with.