DEVELOPED BY
DIGITAL BOOK WORLD&
PUBLISHERS LAUNCH CONFERENCES
Publishing Start-Up Survey
SUMMARY RESULTS PRESENTED BY
MIKE SHATZKINFOUNDER & CEO, THE IDEA LOGICAL
COMPANY
TUESDAY, JANUARY 14 , 2014
Publishing Start-Up Survey Respondents
36.8%
63.2%
Do you work for an established publisher or a publishing technology company/start-up?
Publisher
Start-up/technology company
Publishing Start-Up Survey Respondents
43 publishing start-ups From 8 countries Including 10 start-up publishers Diverse range of types and sizes
25 traditional book publishers From 8 countries Staff tasked with meeting with and evaluating start-
up propositions
• Respondents include self-funded and bootstrapped operations through to three rounds of investment totaling near $8m
• Total full-time employees range from 1 to 150• Started as early as 2002 and several slated to
launch in 2014• Average age of over 2 years old
First, the start-ups…
Geographic distribution of start-ups
Respondents came primarily from the US, but also from the UK, Germany,
Canada, South Africa, Israel,
Russia, and Japan
Causing disruption
ReadersPublishers
RetailersAuthors
LibrariesAgents
AggregatorsOther
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%
74% of start-ups surveyed consider themselves “disruptive” to one or more of the players in the
traditional book publishing value chain:
Greatest challenges start-ups face
“We've been doing this a while. We've done more than people know. To get anywhere you have to execute ferociously to drive revenue. It's a tremendous amount of work. That often gets overlooked – it's a lot of work.”
“It’s a lot of work.”
Greatest challenges start-ups face
Working within slow publishing sales/business development cycles and often reluctant publishers
Managing pivotsMarketing (B2B and B2C)
Building user base/audience (of both authors and readers) Generating (and maintaining) interest and engagement among
readers, authors, and publishersHandling DRMFunding/operating capitalFor start-up and e-first/e-only publishing houses:
Building clout with traditional publishing partners (e.g. bookstores, media)
Developing robust sales and distribution capabilities Understanding the digital marketing and advertising landscape
Now, the publishers…
48.0%
32.0%
4.0%16.0%
Company size
Small
Mid-Sized
Large
Big Five
54.2%
16.7%
29.2%1 - <100100 - <500500+
No. of titles published per year
Geographic distribution of publishers
Respondents also primarily from the
US (over 50%), but also from
Canada, Italy, the UK, Germany, South Africa, Portugal, and
Australia
Who meets and evaluates start-ups?
Business devel-
opmentEditorialInformation technologyManaging
editorialMarketing
Production
Sales
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%
Role/title of the person(s) tasked with evaluating start-up propositions: (select all that apply)
Biggest technology problems publishers face
Data Getting useful data, analytics, and metrics Internal data management (incoming and outgoing)
Digital asset management Creating and managing metadata Marketing assets
Shifting to an XML workflowDigital marketing, promotion, and discoveryStaffing for a digital workflow
Lack of personnel Need for new skillsets and training Sometimes lack of interest
Managing and updating internal systems and technology
What these publishers would be investing in…
Marketing and discoveryMetadataApp developmentWorkflow/collaboration technologiesAnything that weakens Amazon’s hold…
• What are the problems the industry faces today? • Who are the key stakeholders for whom each of
those problems are a pain point? • For what types of content and for which
markets do these problems (and their hoped for solutions) apply?
Finding common ground (and points of contention)
Problems/pain points
Accessibility
Audience engagement
Content/Editorial
Data/Insight/Intelligence
Discovery/Discoverability
Enabling social interaction
Improving workflow
MarketingSimplifying/enabling
transactionsSimplifying technology
0.0% 25.0% 50.0% 75.0% 100.0%
Pub-lishers
Start-ups: What problem(s) are you trying to solve?Publishers: What problem(s) would you like start-ups to tackle?
Problems for whom?
START-UPS PUBLISHERS
Accessibility Authors (54%)Readers (43%)Publishers (26%)
Readers (56%)Libraries (44%)Publishers & Retailers (26%)
Audience engagement Authors (54%)Readers (46%)Publishers (43%)
Publishers (63%)Authors (57%)Libraries(31%)
Content/Editorial Authors (54%)Readers (37%)Publishers (37%)
Publishers (38%)Authors (19%)Retailers & Agents (13%)
Data/Insight/Intelligence
Publishers (66%)Authors (57%),Agents (29%)Readers (26%)
Publishers (94%)Retailers (38%),Libraries (31%)Aggregators (31%)
Discovery/Discoverability
Authors (63%)Readers (57%)Publishers (51%)
Publishers (69%)Readers (50%)Authors (44%)
Problems for whom?
START-UPS PUBLISHERS
Enabling social interaction
Authors (51%)Readers (49%)Publishers (31%)
Publishers (50%)Authors (38%)Readers (31%)
Improving workflow Authors (49%)Publishers (37%)Agents (26%)
Publishers (81%)Retailers(25%)Aggregators (25%)
Marketing Authors (77%)Publishers (43%)Agents (31%)Readers (26%)
Publishers (75%)Retailers (44%)Authors (38%)Aggregators (25%)
Simplifying/enabling transactions
Publishers (46%)Authors (40%)Readers (34%)
Retailers (44%)Publishers (38%)Readers & Aggregators (19%)
Simplifying technology Publishers (51%)Authors (51%)Readers (34%)
Publishers (50%)Readers & Retailers (38%)Aggregators (25%)
To Publishers:
Acces-sibility
Au-di-
ence en-
gagement
Con-tent/ed-itorial
Data/Insight/Intelli-gence
Dis-covery/
Dis-cover-ability
En-abling social inter-action
Improv-ing
work-flow
Market-ing
Sim-plify-ing/en-
abling trans-
actions
Sim-plify-ing
tech-nology
0.0% 25.0% 50.0% 75.0% 100.0%
What problems do you NOT think start-ups need to address?
Trade - narrative fictionTrade - narrative non-
fictionTrade - illustrated
Trade - children's booksK-12
Higher EdScholarly/Academic
ProfessionalReferenceTextbooks
JournalsMagazines
Apps
0.0% 25.0% 50.0% 75.0% 100.0%
PublishersStart-ups
Content/markets
Start-ups: At what types of content/markets are your services aimed?
Publishers: What content/markets do you publish/serve?
Start-ups working with publishers
MetadataEbook files
Trading terms
Licensed contentSales
data/metricsLicense/
use platformNone/no cooper-ation
neededOther
0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0%
What cooperation do you need from established publishing players? (select all that apply)
Publishers evaluating start-ups
Practical-ity to
current business
Low bar-riers/min-imum re-
quire-ments for participa-
tion or coopera-
tion
Faith in start-up manage-ment and personnelLegal risk
Time-burn risk
Financial risk/op-
portunityAuthor/agent re-lationship
What criteria do you use when evaluating start-up propositions? (select all that apply)
Some start-ups publishers are glad they made time for….
Advice from start-ups
Find ways to better serve and support authors
Go D2C: Cultivate direct relationships with readers
Establish new ebook sales terms/models for special use cases (e.g. classrooms)
Think mobileDevelop long-tail SEO, discoverability, and
digital marketing strategiesRethink DRM
Some predictions
“Fiction and non-fiction are diverging as they go digital, and while the focus has mostly been on fiction up till now, things are about to warm up for non-fiction.”
“Publishers will use start ups for: hiring base for engineering talent and out placement source of employment for departing executives. “