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hello everybody
as eric said my name is joe and i am recovering book publisher
and i say that only half-jokingly basically because i spent the last
twenty plus years in the book publishing industry
and we've heard from a lot of terrific speakers and founders today the
represent other industries but i'm here to tell you that book publishing is very
much ripe for disruption
and in fact that's what i'm focusing on in uh... what i'm doing now is a
consultant
and for the last
two to two and a half years i've had the pleasure
of meeting with about two to three dozen
publishing and content industry start-ups in founders
and i've got to say that Richard and his team its Screwpulp
rank right at the top in my book no pun intended but they have something i think
that is really set
disrupt what's going on a publishing and has what it also mention that the
traditional publishers are not where the innovations happening it's with the
startup community so i'm super fired up to introduce Richard Billings from
Screwpulp
(Applause)
I'm Richard CEO and founder of Screwpulp
and we are changing the way people publish books and discover books
an amateur writer
and when i sat down to write that great american novel that we all have in us
I wonder how am I going to publish my work
how am I going to market my work
how am I going to profit from my work
so i started to research the publishing industry
and what I found
is that breaking into the traditional model
is nearly impossible
you've got to go through professional readers
and literary agents before you even make it to the editor's desk
and even if you are published in this archaic model
you're gonna receive less than twenty five percent
of the final book sale
and ninety nine percent of all manuscripts they're submitted to this
model
are rejected
well let's take a look at why
this is a typical literary agent
she'll take in thirty two thousand inquiries in the year
and she's gonna whittle that down only representing
nine authors
and from those nine authors
only five books will be published
and there are literally thousands of these literary agents doing this every
year
and these guys are the experts
so these rejected books
they must be bad right?
well, let's take Joanne for example
Joanne wrote a book
she submitted it to twelve different publishing houses
she received twelve different rejection letters
it wasn't until a year later when one of the CEO's
took to the manuscript home and is a year old daughter got a hold of it
and she begged him to publish
even then he only published five hundred copies
Joanne's book series harry potter
went on to sell nearly half a billion copies
now you may think that this is a
once-in-a-lifetime cinderella story
but every book you see behind me from catcher in the rye
the catch-twenty two
was rejected multiple times
many of them hundreds of times
agatha christie was rejected over five hundred times over a four-year period
she went on to sell two billion dollars worth of books
and is second only in book sales
to william shakespeare
and because of all these hurdles many people are turning to self publishing
self publishing has grown over three hundred percent over the last five years with
nearly a quarter of a million self-published titles in two thousand
eleven alone
self publishing great and it does offer
more revenue from each book sale to the author but it has its own problems
there's little to no marketing available
and there are no mechanisms in which to protect the buyer
so if you take the problems of their traditional model in the self publishing
model
polls indicate
that there are nearly eight million unpublished novels and nearly seventeen
million unpublished how-to books
just sitting out there waiting to be published
for nearly five hundred years
an elite few has decided what books we read
because the publishing industry control of the distribution chains
but now with the advent of the internet and more importantly
mobile reading devices
those chains have been broken
and now the flood gates are open
so we need more eyes
to help filter through the noise and find that good stuff
and just like harry potter
it's gonna be average readers to do this
so who is gonna save these great books from obscurity
SCREWPULP
at Screwpulp we developed a new self publishing model
that utilizes average readers to both market and vet new books
now we know that the best way to market a book is by word of mouth
so at Screwpulp we give away initial copies in exchange for a social media
mention
and the promise of a star rating or review
after these initial copies the price automatically goes up to one dollar
but now you've got a rating
for potential buyers to base their decision on so if you've got five star
book for one dollar
readers are gonna *** it up
and as your book becomes more popular
that price is going to continue to rise
and does two things
it not only build your readership much more quickly
but it also builds confidence in your book's brands
and best of all
the best thing about it is our low overhead approach of utilizing average
readers
allows the author to retain seventy five percent of the final book sale
and not only do we give the author and unique marketplace in which
to sell their work
we also provide them with the tools they need to market their work
and the analytics they need to track that marketing
and we also provide them with the tools they need to track their sales
and their potential sales
we're basically making them the CEO of their own publishing company
and to make sure that we can get their book into the hands of most readers
we provide their book
in the formats for
all types of devices whether it's an iPad or android device
whether it's a nook or a Kindle
we we provide the formats for all of those different devices
and our approach
there's many benefits to our approach
its easy access so anyone can publish
their are no rejection letters at Screwpulp
we provide those marketing tools that help the author to get the word out
about their book
and are crowd driven pricing gives clear indications to readers about the quality
of the content
and the readers are the ones that drive that content
and of course
we provide more revenue to the author
and we do have some competition out there but no one is providing all of
these services under one unbrella. both Kindle Direct Publishing and Pubit by
barnes and noble
only provide the books in the formats for their devices
Screwpulp provides books
for their devices and many others
our social payment system allows early adopters
to to actually engage the authors and vice verse of the authors engage the the
readers
and we're the only ones that are providing these marketing tools along
with the sales services
now to get to market
we're developing key partnerships with universities writer's groups
we're going to conferences in advance
and we're partnering up with trade publications and trade websites
but we have one thing that most companies don't have and that's built in
virality
that social social payment system
is already working for us
and we are using direct advertising
to go to the readers
business model is simple
we keep twenty five percent
of each book sale
let's see how much money can be made here
we take a sampling of only twenty five hundred books
and we know that by industry metrics
that ninety five percent of all books sell less than a hundred copies
but that five percent that sells between one hundred
and one hundred thousand copies if we take the metrics and run it through our
pricing system that equals twenty two million dollars
but don't forget
that in 2011
there were two hundred and fifty thousand self-published titles
and with those kind of numbers
we equal 2.2 billion dollars in that's revenue for Screwpulp
but don't forget about those twenty five million unpublished
novels and how-to books that are just sitting out there right now
and if we can capture just one percent of those a year that's another two
billion dollars
this is a huge market
we built our team ...i'm richard billings CEO and I have over ten years
experience in radio and television
i spent the last ten years and IT management
I've manage large infrastructures
and large budgets I'm the brains of the operation
don't tell these guys i said that
Will Phillips Jr has over 7 and a half years experience
in advertising experience in design experience
he's worked the last year and a half
and a nationally recognized advertising agency he's the one that's creating our
brand and he's the one that makes the experience of nice
and Kris Spencer is our CTO
he has over twenty years experience building e-commerce platforms in
in multiple languages
he's the one that makes the gears turn seamlessly
Richard Batt
his our COO he's our operations and he does our sales
is has ten years experience in logistics
and he's coordinated large events for both saint jude
and for Gibson Guitar
he's does he's our day-to-day operator
but he's also using his excellent copy-write skills
to be the voice of Screwpulp
but where were most excited about his art newest remember Joe Wikert with over
twenty years experience in the publishing industry working for
o'reilly wiley and macmillan
but one of the greatest these that one of the things he brings this table for
us is that he started
a blog called Publishing 2020 about eight years ago
and i'd only does it
focus upon the changes in the publishing industry
it also helps to get the word out there and after the last two years he's worked
for
tools of change
which is a conference that focuses on changing this industry so he's
invaluable to us
we've also been reaching out for advice from people inside and outside the
industry Shari Stauch has over thirty years experience in the publishing
industry
and cliff mckinney
started a successful side start up here and that this called work for pie
and he's given us lots of advice
but Elias Roman
is now the CEO songza
but what's important is he was previously
the CEO
of of the venture called Amiestreet and Amiestreet the concept works
they had crowd driven pricing for music
it was did so well that they recieved three point nine million in their second
round funding
and then they were acquired by amazon
and amazon shuttered
because they were likely disruptive
to their new foray into the music industry
the progress to date as we've raised twenty five thousand dollars in seed
capital
back in march we launched a prototype
and with that prototype we got
lots of information from both the readers and the writers so we went back to
the drawing board
and we built a brand new system from scratch
we launch that system on may first with only four authors
and four books
and of course zero users
within one week
fourteen books
by over ten authors
and over two hundred users
i'm proud to say right now
we have twenty nine books
by twenty five authors
and we have over four hundred users
and we haven't advertised at all
this shows about virality works
and we're excited about it the partnerships we've made
writerswin.com
helps authors to filter through the noise of the publishing industry
and separate the good from the bad
and they have agreed to put us on the good side
pressbooks is a book formatting tool
that creates great-looking e-books
they're gonna send authors our way and we're gonna send authors their way to
get their books formatted
and one thing that's really exciting Ruka press
is a traditional publisher
but they you know
that they can't publish everything
and they're gonna send their overflow to us
and we're gonna send cover design towards their sensical designe second
company
we're asking six hundred and fifty thousand
and with that money are going to triple our efforts to gain more readers
we're gonna get thirty thousand readers
in eighteen months and five thousand books
and conservatively with those numbers
we can make one point five million dollars in those eighteen months
but another thing that
were excited about
we're going to introduce new services such as editing cover design
and not only are those services great for the author but they're
also profitable for Screwpulp
At Screwpulp
we've made it easier than ever for authors to publish market and profit from
their work
all while giving clear indications to readers about the quality of the
content
and since the readers are the ones that control that content
both the readers and the writers get exactly what they want
about what the publishing industry thinks we want
Finally, after five hundred years
publishing has started a new chapter