A monthly magazine that fits in a pocket.
EchoReads exists because good Urdu and English writing was being published every month, and the families who most wanted it were the ones least able to get hold of it.
The problem we started from
A family moves to Manchester, or Toronto, or Melbourne. The parents read Urdu. The children speak it at home and read English everywhere else. Within a generation the reading is gone, not because anyone decided that, but because there was nothing to read: no bookshop, no subscription that arrives, and on a phone, Urdu that looks broken.
Meanwhile a monthly magazine was being edited, written and printed to a real standard, and reaching almost none of those families.
What we do about it
EchoReads puts that publishing on the device everyone already has, and it takes the typography seriously enough that reading Urdu on it is a pleasure rather than a duty. Every monthly issue comes out in an Urdu edition and an English edition, so a household split across two languages can read the same thing.
The library is open to anyone who wants to look through it. A subscription buys the reading, the audio and the offline downloads, and that is the whole business model. There is no advertising, no data sold, and no free tier designed to run out at an inconvenient moment.
How the editors choose
Pieces are filed by field rather than by feed: faith and worship, thought and society, history, economy and justice, the world and the ummah, youth and study, language and literature. The test is whether an article still makes sense read three years later. Much of what is topical does not, and it does not get in.
Anyone can submit. There is no roster. Send the editors something and they will read it.
What we have not built
No parental controls, no algorithmic recommendations, no child profiles, and no group plans in the stores. Those are real gaps and we would rather list them here than let you discover them after paying. If you need one of them, write to us and say so; it is how we decide what to build next.
Talking to us
Email support@echoreads.online, or message +92 332 800 1541 on WhatsApp. A person answers, usually within a working day or two.
Start with this month’s issue.
The library is open to look through right now, with no account. When you want to read it, Echo Pro is one tap inside the app.