All-in-one self publishing platform where writers can publish and the copyright is owned by the company
Domain: Publishing
Status reached: Research
When: Q3 2021, for 2 months
Team skillset: Tech, Biz-dev
Thesis/idea
All-in-one self publishing platform where writers can publish and the copyright will be owned by the company.
- The content market is exploding and companies like Netflix are hungry for new content. Writers and others with content copyrights can make a lot of money.
- Historically, a major pain point for writers has been that there are relatively few publishers, giving them the power (and the financial upper hand). Writers are eager to find alternative ways to publish their content and make more money.
- Self publishing, by Amazon and other players, has allowed writers to create a more lucrative option, but it is also quite complex to execute, given factors like marketing and logistics that writers need to deal with.
This is a very consolidated industry and I still believe that at some point there will be disruption. I believe that the ‘do it yourself’ trend will continue to grow, including in the publishing world.
Why it didn’t progress
- Not right for VC: Very few books/content are likely to succeed enough to make a significant profit, so you need to attract a large number of writers to find the needles in the haystack. This is too much risky for a VC.
- You can bootstrap this idea and expect to have linear growth and not exponential growth as needed from a venture-backed business.
Key insights
- This is a very consolidated industry and I still believe that at some point there will be disruption. I believe that the ‘do it yourself’ trend will continue to grow, including in the publishing world.
Research
Conducted interviews with Yair Assulin, an Israeli writer and journalist, data here: https://clumsy-click-8d5.notion.site/3ff265ee24b84853895b1d4ff4c658c9?v=0ec148d318a
