Streetlib is an online self-publishing solution that is geared towards independent authors. When you register for an account you can upload your e-book use a free ISBN that they give you. There are a ton of distribution options, but Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Google Play and Tolino generate the most sales.
There are over 200,000 titles from 15,000 authors and 1,500 publishers. The average indie is earning $35,000 per year. The markets that Streetlib finds that are most successful are mainly outside the United States, such as Italy, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Mexico, Canada and India.
There are dozens of companies that offer self-publishing solutions to authors, but what makes Streetlib different? CEO Giacomo D’Angelo explained; “With StreetLib they can use different services, from production tools to distribution and sales, all of them being integrated in the same platform, some of them completely free (like StreetLib Write, a sophisticated editor online). And with StreetLib they’ll find yet more services. What we are building a swiss knife for book professionals. Also, author and publishers can use StreetLib to widen their market, because we provide +50 retailers in many different markets. Books can travel the world in no time, reaching everyone regardless of their religion, race or location. By the end of the decade, six billion people will be reading eBooks on their smartphone, and StreetLib is building the best technology to make it happen. ”
I asked Giacomo to tell me something that nobody knows about his company and he stated “I want authors and booklovers to know about our ecommerce platform that enables them to sell books online. It’s called StreetLib Sell, and allows them to create their very own professional bookstore with ease. Everybody can sell their own books or any from our catalog of over 200,000 titles. If they don’t want an entire store, they can also create a book or author’s page, or simply add a widget to their website or blog.
StreetLib will be launching in India later this year and the intention is to launch a site that allow e-books in Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia and Punjabi to be sold all over the world. They are also testing machine learning solutions to develop an Artificial Reader able to leverage AI to design a map of connections between books based not on the usual marketing parameters (sales, user profiles…) but based on the content itself. They are also researching automated translations for audiobooks.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
