New Decentralized Platform Revolutionizes Ebook Market
Written is a newly launched platform designed to fairly compensate authors, enhance their interaction with readers, and enable true ownership of ebooks for buyers. Introduced earlier this year, Written aims to transform ebook publishing, ownership, and trading methods.
Background and Vision
The team behind Written includes Cox, a publisher formerly associated with the popular ebook subscription service Bookmate, as well as publishing houses Individuum and PopcornBooks. Following the sale of these companies in 2022, they identified key challenges in the current digital book ecosystem:
- Amazon's dominant control of the ebook market with limited sales and readership transparency for authors and publishers
- Authors facing difficulty earning a sustainable income
- Readers expressing dissatisfaction with the lack of genuine ownership of purchased ebooks through traditional booksellers
Founder’s Experience and Goals
Baev, who has a background in digital content distribution in both music and ebooks, has long focused on simplifying the publication process and enhancing reader engagement with digital content.
“My thought was that there should be a platform that concretely addresses the issues of the connection between author and reader, but the technology was not there. My futuristic idea was that there should be a platform where an author can come, have all the tools to publish their book on the platform, then readers can come to the app, buy the book with a credit card as usual, but have true digital ownership of the book.”
Summary
Written offers a fresh approach to digital publishing where authors receive fair pay, readers gain true ownership of ebooks, and interaction between both is prioritized through innovative technology.
Author's note: This platform could fundamentally reshape ebook distribution by focusing on fairness and ownership in the digital reading experience.