Zola Books, a new social eBooks retailer has launched its beta site today. After raising $1 million in seed money, it's ready to give readers a different digital book buying experience.

So what is Zola and what makes it different from other eBook retailers? Zola appears to be a mash-up of Amazon and Good Reads but with enough room in the playground for publishers to have a say in how and at what cost their books are sold and distributed. "Co-existance" and "no middle man" are the operative principles behind this new venture.

Like its competitors, Zola Books will work through a web and app based platform, which can be utilized on popular e-readers and tablets.

Moreover as Michael del Castillo reports in Portfolio.com, Zola Books' selling point is that it "plans to disrupt the disrupters, wagering its success on its belief that human curation works better than algorithms when it comes to recommended reading." He adds that it will bring "a human touch back to e-books by bringing book critics, publishing houses, and bookworm friends back into the book-buying process."

Zola Books has some notable backers including prominent writers such as Audrey Niffengger, author of "The Time Traveler's Wife" and Chandler Burr, author of "The Empror of Scent. "Niffengger said the following in an interview with Castillo about investing in the new company, "The idea that we're not going to go out there and stomping on everybody to sell a product, that people can come claim their space and act as a community is really appealing to me."

For now Zola Books is not selling books as it has decided to see what ends up happening with the Department of Justice law suit against Apple and five major book publishers for allegedly conspiring to set e-book prices.