But now a German company called PaperC is trying something new. It’s running with the idea of try-before-you-buy textbooks and taking it further by offering users not just the chance to buy a whole book, but also a particular chapter or even just a page.

Soon it plans to add a monthly subscription option that gives unlimited access.

The idea of buying a single page may sound odd, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of textbooks, where readers often don’t need the whole manuscript. And PaperC’s approach to free previews is similarly sensible: where Amazon shows you the opening chapter or two, this startup lets its users choose which 10 percent of the book they’d like to see without paying (they have a time limit on how long they can look).

PaperC has a search engine and a web reader that allows annotations and sharing, and has partnered with Sony on optimizing its tablet experience. Most importantly, the Leipzig-based firm already has 120,000 registered users and around 100 content deals with publishers like O’Reilly, Pearson, Wiley and others.

“PaperC is not only a bookstore but a library, offering its users a full suite of tools to facilitate their research,” international content manager Bill Glucroft told me, adding that while PaperC’s market so far is in German-speaking countries and eastern Europe, more than half the service’s content is in English.

All sounds fine so far, but here’s an extra twist: the company’s looking for more funding, which it hopes to obtain through an auction-based crowdfunding platform called Innovestment that’s quite interesting in itself.

Here’s the pitch (in German with English subtitles):

PaperC hopes to raise between €50,000 – €100,000 ($61,000 – $123,000). With the campaign already underway for a week, it has already amassed almost €16,000 through the sale of 14 silent shares – with each share representing 0.04 percent equity, the auction currently has the company’s total valuation at €2.6 million.

But hold up. Investors won’t be getting a share of the existing PaperC.de platform, which is based on PDF technology. They’ll be buying into PaperC.com, its HTML5-based successor (shades of Inkling). This is a bet on future value, rather than a chance to get a chunk of what already exists.

“We need additional resources to continue acquiring high-quality content from major, international publishers,” Glucroft said. “Moreover, we want our from-scratch-built HTML5 platform to be the best platform out there for buying, reading and working with academic eBooks. That means giving it the same set of interactive and study-friendly features that our PDF-based platform at PaperC.de already has, and having the ability to convert PDFs of our choosing to ePub, so they can be compatible with PaperC.com.”

PaperC is also working on raising its profile with U.S. and Canadian universities, he added.

The company fits into two notable strands of the Berlin scene: the e-reading bunch, as typified by Readmill and Txtr, and the academia-facing likes of ResearchGate.

The feature, in beta, means readers can read an ebook on any device that has Dropbox installed, without having to download a separate reading app.

Here’s how it works: Log in to your O’Reilly account and authorize your Dropbox account from there. That creates an O’Reilly folder in your Dropbox. From then on, you have the option of sending any ebook you buy from O’Reilly to Dropbox, in any format — Android, EPUB, MOBI for Kindle, PDF and DAISY (digital talking book).

“Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) spent a year and a half to build eight textbooks,” Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis said. “In two years, we’ve built 200.” Inkling Habitat is available immediately to a “select group of publishers” in an early adopter program, and will be available to everyone later this year.

Inkling Habitat lets publishers create interactive e-books with HD video, interactive features and 3D content in a free, cloud-based program. E-books can immediately be published to iPad and the Web in HTML5, with updates pushed to both platforms at once. (Well, iPad is available now and Web publishing will be added later this year.) Multiple groups can collaborate on the content simultaneously, so a production editor in New York City can look at the same project as a designer in India, simultaneously. Every version of a product is saved, so changes can always be rolled back.

O’Reilly is a partner at launch. iPad publisher Open Air has already released three titles using Inkling Habitat technology, though the program has not been formally announced until today.

The program is free, but in order to use it publishers must agree to make the books they create with it available through Inkling’s store (in its iPad app and on its website). Inkling takes a cut of the revenues from those books. Unlike with iBooks Author, publishers can also sell the books they create through other channels (their own websites or as individual apps, for instance) and Inkling does not take a cut of those sales.

McInnis demoed the product for me and it looks very easy to use. It’s key for not just publishers but laso the digital content producers they work with — often, teams in India — to know how to use the platform. Inkling has already partnered with the two largest digital content producers, Aptara and Innodata, to train them and they are now ready to use it.

My first job out of college was at an independent publisher, and one of my tasks was to FedEx gigantic stacks of printed book files, marked up with red pencil notes and Post-Its, to a design team in India. (This was in 2006, not that long ago!) It was incredibly nervewracking, from my point of view — the packages got lost or sidetracked somewhere in India more than once, which I swear was not my fault — and just the process of sending them back and forth took forever, even though both our team in New York and the producers in India were working quickly.

Being able to log onto a cloud-based program, manipulate files directly, send notes to designers, publish immediately and always roll back if you make mistake is a total lifesaver — and may be regarded that way by publishers who have been wary to publish interactive e-books because it is so expensive. Also, because Inkling Habitat doesn’t charge for the platform but relies on a revenue share of the finished product, the company has an incentive to work with publishers throughout the proces. “Their win is our win,” said MacInnis, “and their failure is our failure.”

Inkling is based in San Francisco and has raised $17 million in funding.

As sales move online, and the bricks-and-mortar stores that used to be publishers’ main customers become less important, what can publishers do to sell more e-books? That was the subject of a future of e-books panel at BookExpo America today that was moderated by Turvey.

Though none of the panelists, publishers all, were ready to say they don’t care about consumers–Random House Digital President Amanda Close immediately responded that “we have always cared deeply about our consumers”–they admitted that they’re facing stiff challenges in getting readers to discover new e-books. “Publishers do not know how to market e-books yet,” said Evan Schnittman, Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing at Bloomsbury. Or, rather, they know how to market the new titles that they’re simultaneously marketing in stores, but the older titles that publishers are converting into e-books present more of a challenge. “Let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ve never marketed backlist before,” Schnittman said.

Bestseller lists have become more fragmented, Turvey noted, as more e-retailers publish individual lists (like the Nook and Kindle bestseller lists) that may be driven by price cuts and promotions. Will that affect discoverability? Schnittman said consumers need “systems of vetting and finding authority” and bestseller lists can provide that. Andrew Savikas, SVP O’Reilly, disagreed: “I don’t see a future for the single-source, objective bestseller list [like the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) list].”

When Turvey moved on to new business models, he said, “Amanda [from Random House] has already recused herself from this question. I think I see her attorney in the back.” No Random House spokesperson would have provided the answer that Savikas gave: “I think we’ll move away from being a purchase-based industry. We’ll move to access-based models in which the actual price of the unit is irrelevant.”

Turvey asked if publishers could perhaps do what magazines have done and reach out directly to their consumers. David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books Group, said magazines are more recognizable brands than most book publishers–for every well-known brand like Zagat or Rick Steves, there are more traditional publishers that are not recognized as brands.

“I’m struggling with holding up the magazine as a beacon of success. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) singlehandedly destroyed the magazine industry,” Schnittman said. “We have millions of products to sell. I think we have to have a marketing relationship with consumers. I’m not sure we can effectively have a sales relationship with consumers.”