iAuthor launches out of beta to give self-publishing authors a louder voice

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iAuthor

iAuthor's Founder, Adam Kolczynski

iAuthor publicly launched its global advertising platform today for self-publishing authors.

The Internet has made it easier for authors to bypass the traditional publishing process and publish their own work. This has also caused a flood content that makes it difficult for authors to stand out, particularly without access to the same marketing resources as established publishing organizations.

iAuthor was founded by Adam Kolczynski who founded an independent book publisher called Polybius Books in 2010. He wanted to tackle the “book discoverability problem” and saw that a gap existed in the market between self-publishers and established authors.

“For emerging authors, the digital revolution is a mixed blessing,” he said to VentureBeat. “The Web may have democratized the act of publishing, but it hasn’t democratized the outcome. Authors of equal talent do not have equal access to readers and the gap between talent and opportunity is widening. iAuthor empowers authors and book service-providers to forge their own brand in a saturated market.”

Kolczynski said that no-one is more committed to promoting creative content than the content’s creators. Authors can showcase their books and literary applications on the iAuthor platform.The site is highly visual and clicking into a book will yield information about the author, a synopsis, videos, and links to buy. All the content is indexed, it is easily searchable for readers looking to discover new things to read.

iAuthor has social features to connect authors and readers, and authors can track their advertisements’ performance through analytics, as well as receive feedback from the community on their covers, summaries, and brand. Competitors include Jellybooks, Libboo and Wattpadd, which also provide authors a place to promote their work and build an audience. With all the sites, the challenge is building a marketplace that is strong on both sides. Readers won’t come to the site if there are not a significant number of compelling authors, and authors won’t use the site if there is not a large community of readers.

This will be a challenge for iAuthor, which worked with 250 users during beta and is now opening up the platform to all authors. It is based in London and currently bootstrapped.