Urging Authors to be Entrepreneurs: iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss (Part 2)
SM: We should establish some context for iUniverse, Author Solutions, and your portfolio of companies. What is the history between iUniverse and Author Solutions, and how did Bertram Capital get involved in them?
KW: Author House is a company that was founded ten years ago in Bloomington, Indiana, and iUniverse is a company founded eight years ago in Lincoln, Nebraska. Author House was likely the first company to create Internet-based solutions targeting new publishing solutions.
SM: You are talking about self-publishing, correct?
KW: Correct. Interestingly enough, iUniverse established a similar business in Lincoln shortly after Author House. It was established a bit differently and had a more advanced platform. The founder wanted to use production services out of Shanghai, so he established a production services group there and had day-to-day operations headquartered in Lincoln.
Bertram formed Author Solutions and bought Author House. They then wanted to roll up the second-largest player into their portfolio. Accordingly, they bought iUniverse which, when combined with Author House, gives Author Solutions enough resources to concentrate on organic growth from here on out.
Those two brands have been responsible for over 80,000 titles by 50,000 authors over the past ten years. They have been responsible for over 10,000,000 books sold, predominately in the United States. Last year alone, Author Solutions was responsible for one out of every 17 books published and in distribution in the United States, and was responsible for one out of every 12 books sold.
SM: Is it all print on demand? What is the Shanghai operation doing?
KW: The Shanghai operation focuses on design services that you would see in any publishing operation.
As our name implies, we deliver solutions for authors. We try to deliver solutions which allow people to go from the left, which I call free, to the right, which I call very expensive. Basically, we give authors the ability to do business anywhere, anytime, and any way. We are heavily focused on customer satisfaction.
We have an offering called Wordclay, which is a DIY solution allowing authors to submit their manuscripts and publish free. I am 100% serious when I say publish free. They do not have to pay a penny. They only thing they buy are their books. We launched the product in January of this year. By the end of April we had approximately 20,000 registered users, 4,000 manuscripts in process, and 400-500 titles which had gone live.
I am not sure how long we want it to survive as a standalone brand, but I do know that the platform is one we will bring to market as an OEM play. We issued a press release last week at Book Expo America, where we announced 11 partnerships. We will have over 30 by the end of June and 100 by the end of the year. These are deals where we re-skin the Wordclay application completely for a partner; it could be John Jones Publishing’s online platform. We supply the power and intellectual capital for the application and they supply the users. Our partners can use that platform, jettison out of the platform, or even buy it as a service.
This segment is part 2 in the series : Urging Authors to be Entrepreneurs: iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss
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Sramana,
Although iUniverse may be an entrepreneurial success story, it may not really serve the best interests of its author clients.
iUniverse and their related companies are essentially vanity publishing companies who lure in innocent authors with visions of best-sellerdom–and who charge high prices for their services. To refer to it as a ‘self-publishing’ company is really a misnomer.
Even their WordClay pricing is much more expensive than anyone should pay for print on demand.
There are 1000s of small publishing companies and self-publishing authors who take advantage of inexpensive print on demand technology without tying up with a company like iUniverse.
An example of a great resource is Lightning Source, which is part of the big book distributor, Ingram; they do print on demand for a fraction of what iUniverse charges. Moreover, because of their relationship with Ingram, they automatically get a book listed at Amazon.com, B&N.com, Borders.com, etc.
Of course, Amazon.com has entered the picture with BookSurge. Although it’s not a bargain, it lets authors keep all the rights to their books and offers a pretty decent 35% royalty on books sold on Amazon.com.
To #1: I must say that I was very pleased with the way iUniverse handled the manuscript. Traditional publishers had a waiting list of 3-4 years and that after the manuscript was accepted (add another year).