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The world's largest library of more than 5,000 Book Summaries
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What is a summary?
Each five-page summary is presented in a crisp magazine-page format. You can read it in less than 10 minutes – the perfect length to deliver the book's key ideas. The no-fluff summaries are logically structured to get the maximum out of your reading time.
The best way to see what a summary looks like is to read one. Click for two free summaries.
More than 5,000 summaries
Select from more than 5,000 summaries. That's 10 times the selection of a typical summary site. Download the summaries you need right away.
50+ new titles per month
Every year we add summaries of the 500 best new business books, the perfect amount of titles. Our library gives you a broad and deep selection of cutting-edge books. That's another example of how we beat typical summary sites ten-fold.
Which books do you summarize?
The short answer: all the business books essential to your job and career.
The longer answer: We monitor the publication of more than 10,000 business books every year. Every book that survives our initial team screening is rated from zero to 10 using a rigorous review process. Our rating criteria are applicability, innovation and style. We prepare summaries only for those books that earn an overall rating of five or higher to assure the superiority of the material you receive. Book titles featured on getAbstract are of exceptional quality.
The very short answer: If it's not on getAbstract, it's not worth knowing about.
How do you ensure the content's quality?
A world-class editorial team writes our summaries. First, to ensure accurate, smart and stylish content, we employ scores of experienced business journalists, whose work is also published in The New York Times, Fortune, Financial Times, BusinessWeek and in other leading publications in the U.S. and Europe. Next, a team of in-house editors refines each manuscript four times. Then we lay it out in our clean and crisp format. Finally, the publisher or the book's author proof-reads the summary to ensure the highest quality.
Subscription plans
Depending on the subscription plan you choose, you get limited or unlimited access to the existing library of 5,000 business book summaries plus all the new ones. Our most popular plan, the Gold Subscription, is $299 per year or $179 per half-year. It gives you unlimited all-you-can-eat download privileges, making it less than 10 cents per summary, with no additional charges. Click to learn about all available plans.
The Personalized Summary Service
No matter which subscription plan you choose (Gold or Silver), there's one sweet feature that all plans include: the Personalized Summary Service. Once a week, we e-mail you one summary of a business book that is relevant to your job or areas of personal interest. From a choice of over 100 business topics, you indicate the themes that interest you. Each week we pick the best summary from the topics you selected and send it to you by e-mail, so you'll never miss a trend. This is on top of the unlimited download privileges you get with our most popular Gold Subscription.
Audio summaries
Yes, we also have summaries in audio format! With our most popular Gold Subscription you'll get unlimited access to our library of hundreds of MP3 audio summaries. Simply download them from our site, transfer them to your iPod or other MP3 device, and listen to them on the go.
Getting started
To get started, click the subscribe button anywhere on the site and complete our simple sign-up process. Once signed up, use our Web site to choose your summaries. Your summaries will arrive in your in-box immediately.
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About getAbstract
Since launching our service in 1999, getAbstract has become the world's largest provider of business book summaries and has built up a base of more than four million satisfied customers. getAbstract is a fully management-owned company. We are not affiliated with any publishing house we work independently for you. Click for the story of getAbstract. Learn more about the management team.
Corporate subscriptions
Many of the world's largest companies offer their employees full access to the getAbstract library. Our clients include some of the most sophisticated and knowledge-driven firms in business today, such as Microsoft, Citigroup, Daimler, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Boeing, SAP, UBS, Credit Suisse, Novartis and MasterCard. Learn more about our corporate subscription plans.
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