Image credit: Inkitt
Inkitt is a brand-new self-publishing platform that allows people self-publish stories. Then, it uses AI and data science to select the most compelling stories. Finally, it tweaks, distributes and sells those stories on a second app Galatea.
Now, it’s raised $37 million in aid of that ambition. The startup has already attracted 33 million users and dozens of bestsellers.
The new funding will be used to expand the kind of content it produces AI to write stories based on your original ideas, and to produce versions of its fiction personalized for specific readers; a move into games and audiobooks; and more video content adapted from fiction published on its platform — video that is produced with humans today but will, eventually, also be generated using AI.
Inkitt’s ambitions are, in a way, a notable zig to the publishing industry zag.
With the rise of mobile phones, reading has been in decline for the last two decades. Inkitt believes that it can pull in more significant amounts of reading time and engagement from its users, by focusing on more innovative ways of delivering books, building out chapters that are shorter and easier to read on mobile devices and incorporating a number of effects (such as sounds) throughout the text to make the reading experience more dynamic.
Also, by making the books more fitting to readers’ tastes. It runs A/B tests around every aspect of the work from titles and story arc, to first lines and cliffhangers. That gives Inkitt a trove of data not just for specific books, but around how fiction in general is performing, and what performs best — learnings that it applies in turn more immediately to subsequent books getting published.
Inkitt, founded in Berlin and now based in San Francisco, is focussed on fiction — but it wouldn’t be totally accurate to say it’s aiming for literary fiction. In fact, after a famous author dabbling on the platform several years ago walked away in horror and disgust after Inkitt suggested a number of edits to him for an upcoming novel, Albazaz said that Inkitt prefers to save itself the headaches of working with big names and big egos to focus on the long tail of undiscovered talent.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
