Publishing Is Alive And Well
A Berliner in San Francisco – Ali Albazaz ninth from left. – © Inkitt
A new $37M financing round for Inkitt (as TechCrunch reports) brings up the total that founder Ali Albazaz has raised to date to $117M – proof, if it’s needed, that the self-publishing market is no niche. People self-publish their (e)-books on Inkitt, and Inkitt analyzes the text and reader behavior, for instance reading speed, break-off points, and A/B tests on titles, first lines, cliffhangers, and even story arcs. Learnings are used to make suggestions and prompts in all subsequently uploaded books. A clear case where AI tech can help.
Inkitt publishes the most promising and popular books authors upload on its platform on another app called Galatea. The app is designed to make the reading experience more dynamic by delivering the books onto mobile devices in innovative ways, such as chapter by short and easy to read chapter, or with effects such as sounds in the text. The highest performing romance content may even be turned into a video series with bite-sized episodes on the Galatea TV app.
Albazaz sees himself as a publisher. However, artists beware: you may not like the data-driven edits his platform will suggest. Albazaz founded Inkitt in Berlin but moved its HQ to San Francisco in 2022. We reported this intention in 2021 when he raised their series B.
