“What the photocopier was to zines, we hope the People’s E-Book will be to digital books.” – Greg Albers

Working for TOC, I meet and talk to people from all over the world who are doing incredible things to transform the publishing industry. Sometimes I forget there are people right here in my own Arizona backyard doing some pretty cool things to transform publishing.

Greg Albers

One such person is Greg Albers of Hol Art Books. Greg is the best kind of book person. He’s an art book person. He’s also prone to thinking outside the book box in big way, and his wildly successful “People’s E-Book” Kickstarter campaign aims to do just that.

We’ve seen publishing/book-related Kickstarter publishing campaigns aplenty, but most focus on a particular project – seeking funding for the making, promotion, and/or distribution on a specific title. Greg’s Kickstarter campaign, “The People’s E-Book” is about creating an ebook production app. One that is both super simple to use and free.

The details on how the app will work/what it will do can be found on the Kickstarter page, and it’s well worth taking a look. (nutshell: the people’s ebook app will output .epubs in as wysiwyg a way as possible). But to me the truly intriguing part of this project is beyond the details of hows and whats, it’s the why and for whom. As Greg states on the site:

The People’s E-Book seeks to be a lab, an incubator, an e-book creation platform for artists, authors, and alternative presses who want to try new things, publish new books, and push into new territories. The People’s E-Book will handle e-books of all sizes and scope, but it will excel in areas that no one else has cared to consider—the very small, the quick and dirty, the simple and the experimental.

The People’s E-Book is a tool that doesn’t account for what e-books are, but rather lets its users imagine what they can be.

This tool aims to be simple from the start, and that simplicity lowers the barrier in a whole new way. People who maybe didn’t think about themselves as authors can see themselves as authors. The community that Albers is courting is not authors or publishers – it’s everyone else.

What is possibly even better, while the tool is starting super simple, it will evolve based on the needs and desires of its users.  The People’s E-Book intends to encourage the community it serves to collaborate, experiment, and influence the tool’s evolution. Creators/artists/storytellers will be creating the tool based on how they want to tell their stories. That’s exciting stuff.

Working with Albers to develop this nifty ebook tool is the Present Group, developers who are devoted not only to creating tools of change, but enabling creators to create tools of change.

The People’s E-Book Kickstarter campaign ends tonight at midnight (Tucson time), so head over to the site and jump on the bandwagon while you still can. If all goes as planned, we can expect to see the first iteration of this cool ebook tool making an appearance in late Spring. And, I for one, am really looking forward to it.

Our next profile is by Matt Edelman, CEO of Glossi.com.

I’m really good at …

Empowering creators (individuals, influencers, brands) to easily create and share engaging content experiences in the form of beautiful rich media magazines across devices.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

We look good! When people discover Glossi, they like what they see.

The three things your friends say you are…

1. Easy
2. Innovative
3. Addicting

What are your three BEST life skills?

1. Sleek output
2. Ease of use
3. Highly distributable – no design or technical skills required!

What are you most passionate about?

Empowering creators to express, share and market their ideas, products and brands in creative, engaging ways across devices.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

We’re a technology-driven company that looks like a media company.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

Glossi.com will be bigger than any consumer internet company in your portfolio.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…lovers, not fighters.

Our next profile is by Mitchell Davis, Founder & Chief Business Officer of BiblioLabs, creators of BiblioBoard.

I’m really good at …

From experience we understand what it really takes to make things work and we work as a team. We understand that if people won’t pay money for it then it is not a business.  We are great at launching products, taking in data and changing course quickly until we find the right path.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

Our high level of engagement and the degree of imagination we use in solving problems. And that we are really nice and easy to work with.

The three things your friends say you are…

1. Agile
2. Friendly
3. Smart

What are your three BEST life skills?

1. Levering existing (but not always obvious) efficiencies to drive the cost out of creating complex things.
2. Creating a new way of looking at and discovering things from the past that may have been forgotten.
3. Building a platform that thrives on change and adaptation.

What are you most passionate about?

1. Leveling the playing field – Letting a small town library deliver a patron media experience that is as good as Apple or Amazon.
2. Sustainability – Create revenue streams for ongoing digitization of cultural and historical materials.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

The immense scale of roles and activities we have consolidated onto a single platform.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

We are debt-free, have been profitable for three years and our best days are ahead of us.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…flower shops to make money.

Our next profile is by Alison Yesilcimen from Media Cooler Innovations.

I’m really good at …

Bryce Cutt (Co-founder & CTO) and Alison Yesilcimen (Co-founder & CEO)

Finding new ways to generate revenue from used content. Content usually gets used once by the publisher and then forgotten. Not anymore! Media Cooler’s technology gives publishers an innovative and easy way to showcase their valuable articles and images. Businesses can quickly browse and buy articles and images they need within minutes or make custom article requests, positioning the publisher as a valuable content resource.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

Publishers notice how easy we’ve made it for them to implement their content marketplace with minimal costs and effort on their part.

The three things your friends say you are…

Seamless: We get publishers to market in less than a month.

Smart: It’s a fabulous way to capitalize on their archived content.

Sophisticatedly simple: For such a robust platform, it’s easy for both the publishers and businesses to use.

What are your three BEST life skills?

Our startup provides the publishing community with a new way to create money from their “gently used” content, generate valuable business, and broaden the scope of a publisher’s audience.

What are you most passionate about?

As a former publisher, I understand the challenges publishers are experiencing. This is why I’m passionate about helping publishing companies capitalize on their access to talented journalists and valuable archived content to drive new revenue!

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

Professionally produced content that is interesting and engaging will always be sought after.  Archived content can generate an ongoing revenue source creating a long tail effect.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

Media Cooler’s technology helps publishers make money from their archived articles/images and engage businesses in a new collaborative way.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…sharing Pop Rocks with the ones you love.

Our next profile is by Laura Austin, Gavin Summers, and Titash Neogi from BookMachine.

I’m really good at …

Laura Austin

Bringing publishing professionals together offline. Our events in London, Oxford and New York are packed full of publishers, authors, developers, and designers, and we have new cities added all the time; our new online service, BookMachine.me, aims to bring everyone in the industry together on the web, and help them easily find each other.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

There’s no cliques – from our very first social in London where 9 people turned up, through to the busy events we have now, the idea has been that whether you’re a junior coder or top level executive, BookMachine is for you. We don’t do ‘formal’ or ‘exclusive’; this is a place for people who really make publishing happen.

The three things your friends say you are…

Titash Neogi

Fun, creative, and busy.

What are your three BEST life skills?

Socializing (definitely), finding new adventures and unique experiences, and finding pleasure in simple things, all three of which you should find on our site

What are you most passionate about?

Bringing people together, making valuable introductions, and seeing the great new projects that result.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

Gavin Summers

The sheer number of people involved in the network, from those attending the events, to others reading our site. The vision is that a publisher from New York could visit Oxford, for example, and instantly find familiarity in the BookMachine network there.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

Discover the publishing industry online – find collaborators with the skills you need for today.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…plugging in to BookMachine!

Our next profile is by Daniel Fountenberry from Borne Digital.

I’m really good at …

Tech stuff (I’m BORNe digital, baby!);

Nerdy stuff (REALLY into books!);

Adapting (for work I create books that adapt to children’s reading level);

Building my bright future (so says my grandma);

Creative romancing, oops, I mean, writing.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

I’m a great storyteller (I can keep it simple or make it really complex, as long as it teaches a lesson);

I’m great with kids (seriously);

I’m really friendly (anyone who wants to publish is my BFF!).

The three things your friends say you are…

Analytical (data is king and I know how to use it!);

Collaborative (I’m easy to get along with and willing to be part of a team to make things happen);

Forward thinking (what I’m doing now everyone will be doing tomorrow).

What are your three BEST life skills?

I’m an open book – it’s up to you if you want to read me or write me…

I’m flexible (be it Android or iOS).

I gain fulfillment from my work – raising a new generation of readers and leaders.

And as a bonus, here’s a fourth life skill: I’m very optimistic – I believe I’m the future!

What are you most passionate about?

Helping kids read: I want to help all children reach their full potential. But so many children can’t learn because they can’t read! I want to help publishers produce adaptive digital books that can respond to a child’s needs. Many teenagers and adults need adaptive books too.

And saving the world, of course.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

I’m a little shy to admit this, but I think it’s better that you know it right now.  This is Borne Digital’s very “first time.”  TOC will be our first time unveiling ourselves to the world. We are very proud to be the earliest stage company in the competition. We’re on the cutting edge to technology and eager to find our first partner. Will it be you?

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

I’m an educator and publisher of children’s books. My books are adaptive – they become easier or more difficult according to the child who’s reading. Want to help me write them?  #futureofreading #bemyvalentine #bornedigital

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…anyone who ♥s books!

Our next profile is from Kim Werker, Brett Sandusky, and Corey Pressman from The Holocene.

I’m really good at …

Delivering fascinating, useful information; well-designed tutorials; and brilliant patterns (and, eventually, recipes) to crafters, makers and doers, on whatever device they use.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

We’re experimenting with new publishing, business and content models, with a defined audience in mind. The first part might make people think we’re daring innovators; the second part makes us think we’re simply creating a publication that we – as crafters, makers and doers – want to read and learn from, ourselves.

The three things your friends say you are…

We’re lean, passionate, and dedicated to great content.

What are your three BEST life skills?

We’re keeping great content at the heart of our tech development, with the goal of solving our own problems as do-it-yourselfers. In that regard, we’re laying out a path that could be followed by other publishers of niche content who want to reach their audience digitally, with as little friction as possible.

In fact, we hope to end up creating a very successful model of direct-to-consumer digital publishing. Our use of metadata and user-centered design will allow us to interact with our readers and influence the development and evolution of our product so it remains smart and, most importantly, useful. Only time will tell, but we think the open relationship we’re entering into with our readers will result in exciting work.

As such, we’re being very public and transparent about the decisions we make, the tech we use and the ways we reach out to our audience.

What are you most passionate about?

We’re obsessive about making stuff, about disseminating information, and about learning. We want it to be dead simple to follow how-to instructions on a smartphone, tablet and desktop. It’s surprisingly not easy to do that right now – it involves zooming, paper note-taking, Post-it-note-sticking, scrolling, and constantly losing one’s place. To be frank, it often involves just printing it all out.

The Holocene delivers content formatted for different screen sizes so there’s no zooming, we make it easy and intuitive to navigate the content, we allow for annotation (and, eventually, for annotations to be shared so people can learn from each other), and we deliver step-by-step instructions one at a time so there’s no zooming or losing one’s place.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

We’re experimenting with a publishing model that’s very new, so people might not yet be familiar with it. We’re also experimenting with subscription models. Conveying both types of experimentation, along with the reasons we’re confident that they’ll be successful, is very hard to do in just a few minutes. Also, we all love making and eating pastrami, which may or may not be relevant but certainly isn’t obvious.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

The Holocene is a digital, multimedia micromagazine and platform that delivers outstanding original content to makers, crafters and DIYers.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…making pastrami and eating it, with good bourbon.

Our next profile is from Noelle Millholt and Neal Shenoy of Speakaboos.

I’m really good at …

Keeping kids engaged and learning anytime and anywhere.

Speakaboos is a multi-platform subscription service that offers educational, entertaining interactive picture books to children six and below. Speakaboos inspires a love of reading in young children through one of the largest catalogs of interactive children’s picture books produced in partnership with publishers such as Henson, Penguin, Abrams and Charlesbridge. Speakaboos is in public beta and our content is enjoyed by over 1MM consumers each month across computers, tablets and mobile devices in homes, schools and libraries globally.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

My entourage.

The Speakaboos team is among the best in the business with experience from Barnes & Noble, Leapfrog, Nickelodeon, PBS Kids, Scholastic and Yahoo!.

Neal Shenoy, CEO & Co-Founder is a Founding Partner at [212]MEDIA and Co-Founder of Saavn, the largest streaming music service in the world for Indian content. Noelle Millholt, COO & Co-Founder was an entrepreneur in residence at [212]MEDIA and worked in children’s programming at the American Museum of Natural History. Our Chief Content Officer, Dr. Alice Wilder, produced several of the top children’s television shows in the U.S. (Blues Clues and SuperWHY!). Our VP of Content Production, Amy Kraft, has built award-winning interactive storybook catalogs for Barnes & Noble, Scholastic, Leapfrog and Hooked on Phonics. Our VP of Product, Stephen Massoni, and our VP of Engineering, Thierry Sansaricq, helped build NickJr.com into the top kids video streaming site in the U.S.

The three things your friends say you are…

1. Inventive
2. Perfectionist
3. Experienced

At Speakaboos, we like building better mousetraps. To successfully build a service that inspires children to become lifelong readers you need to re-invent the model for the delivery of children’s books: cross-publisher relationships, interactive storybook content that meets children’s expectations of the digital medium, distribution across all devices, channels and geographies, and a pricing model that is affordable but profitable.

We’re also perfectionists. Speakaboos is dedicated to a build, test and iterate model that starts and ends with kids. The result has been strong engagement with our early beta service with children consuming over 60 books per month and spending over 2 hours reading.

Perfection, however, comes with practice. Our team has seen success building the top children’s television shows, the most prolific interactive content catalogs and the biggest children’s entertainment properties online.

What are your three BEST life skills?

1. We make you smarter
2. We’re everywhere
3. We have great earning potential

Publishers love Speakaboos because we invest in producing rich, interactive storybook content that we can position educationally using our proprietary pedagogy, research and testing. They also love Speakaboos because we are able to distribute to channels – both domestically and internationally – they may not reach including homes, schools and libraries. And finally, we can grow the revenue pie. As an access-based subscription model, we create recurring revenue streams in new markets that lead to the discovery and purchase of their books and apps.

What are you most passionate about?

We want to inspire a lifelong love of reading.

Books are losing ground to video and games because digital storybooks and the services that distribute them do not meet the expectations kids have of digital mediums. Speakaboos solves that problem by producing and distributing content that is engaging for children but fundamentally developmental through a scalable model built in partnership with the publishing industry.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

My brains.

Speakaboos is built on a proprietary, patentable technology platform with an Authoring Platform that enables interactive storybook content to be produced once and published across iOS, Android and Web platforms simultaneously; a Playback Engine that enables multi-screen content delivery via a subscription service across web and mobile platforms synchronously and a Child-Directed User Interface that is universal across all devices.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

Speakaboos inspires kids to read more and at the same time we help our our partners make money.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…sharing a book you love with the one you love.

Our next profile is from Anna Lewis and Oli Brooks of ValoBox.

I’m really good at …

Offering web-friendly ebooks. That means I’m not going to make you pay for the whole thing if you just want a chapter or two. I’m not going to make you hang around downloading a file that you then have to open in some random application, and I’m not going to ask you to go through a long checkout process every time you want to buy something.

Instead, I’m going to let you search through the text of the whole book, preview the bits you’re interested in, and pay for the parts you read.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

I’m refreshingly straightforward. I’m instantly useable on any device. Whether you’re on an iPad, an Android phone or a laptop, you can always access books on ValoBox. You just need a browser.

The three things your friends say you are…

Intuitive
Sociable
Responsive

What are your three BEST life skills?

I’m easy-going: I’m not asking you to spend money or time creating bespoke files and changing your workflow. If you have an EPUB and some metadata, it takes seconds to get going.

I’m super sociable: You, your authors and your readers can use the sharing functions of ValoBox to tweet links to a particular part of a book or embed it.

I’m flexible: if you want me to become part of your own system, I’ve got all kinds of APIs you can use.

What are you most passionate about?

Book content should be more integrated with the web. At the moment when you are searching online for some information, or looking for how to do something, you can search and view web articles, but you can’t look inside books. There’s loads of incredibly useful information that’s just too hard to access. ValoBox makes reading books as easy as viewing a webpage.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

How well I play with others. Some of the coolest stuff I do happens under the hood and can enable publishers, authors or developers to deliver content to others in new and exciting ways – whether it’s subscription services, or mashing books into other applications… it’s all possible.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

ValoBox gets books in front of people before retailers can get a look in. It integrates books with the rest of the web so expert content, previously locked away, can be found via a Google search and customers can buy the exact part they need.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

…reminding us that not even love can get in the way of a good publishing technology conference.

Our next profile is from Jacek Grebski of CartoDB.

I’m really good at … 

Creating beautiful data driven stories through maps and visualization.

What is the first thing that people notice about you?

Our background stems from biodiversity conservation, and the projects that we work on are those that tell stories which matter. These are conservation of endangered species, deforestation issues, and other similar projects that have a positive impact on our planet.

The three things your friends say you are…

Innovative: We’re always trying to push the bar forward in terms of spatial data visualization and storytelling.

Easy: For anyone in journalism who’s had to work with data driven visualizations before, CartoDB is a godsend.

Great looking: We like to make maps and visualizations beautiful and we are great at it.

What are your three BEST life skills?

We make it easier than ever to tell stories with data.

We work on all mobile devices so those stories can live on the web and mobile.

We scale. We can render 10 points or 100 million points, and can handle 10 visits or 10 million visits a day.

What are you most passionate about?

Visualizing large and complex data sets has never been easy, and being able to tell compelling stories through those visualizations is an art form all within itself. At CartoDB we’re trying to make this process as simple and intuitive as possible without having to know a considerable amount of code.

What is the one thing that people don’t notice about you right away that you wish they would?

In many ways CartoDB is a blank canvas that allows you to create a wide variety of visualizations, it can be used for storytelling, or to build mobile applications, or run complex geospatial analysis.

While we work with many sectors and have made it easier than before to dive into CartoDB’s functionality, we’d love for people to log in and have that Eureka! moment the first time they use the platform and see its complete value from the onset.

Your best (and most sincere) VC pickup line reduced to the length of a tweet…

Making beautiful dynamic maps is complicated, we make it easy by providing a scalable cloud powered geospatial database, an analysis interface and a visualization engine.

Complete this phrase: Valentine’s Day is for _______________.

Valentine’s Day is for you and your loved one to try CartoDB.