Building a publishing start-up? Read this

I started a publishing start-up called Commaful, which reached millions of visitors, housed hundreds of thousands of stories, poems, and fanfics—and got shortlisted for a FutureBook Startup of the Year award.

Then we shut it down.

I want to share what we learned so you can make smarter choices with your publishing start-up. We’re also starting a new project in the publishing space called CharacterHub: a place for creating, saving and sharing fictional characters. These tips helped us as we planned CharacterHub; I hope they help you too.

Content matters far more than format or tooling

Even with exciting features at Commaful, if we didn’t have great content, people wouldn’t stay. We tried so many new ideas, like social polls for stories, that initially amazed users, but these same people didn’t stick around. Despite positive feedback, users would go elsewhere for better fan fiction or higher-quality comics on platforms like Wattpad or Tapas. We thought getting bigger would solve these issues, but it didn’t. Top creators moved to larger platforms for better opportunities, and we couldn’t compete. If we were enormous, it’s possible that this wouldn’t matter, but it would have been incredibly difficult to become enormous without high-quality content.

Lesson: Always prioritise high-quality content. Great features don’t matter if the content isn’t compelling.

You started a publishing start-up. Good luck moderating it

This is important if you have a community or audience, which most publishing start-ups do. When our community had less than 1,000 members, everything seemed perfect. I thought we had the magic touch. We had built such a kind, energetic and positive community. But then, problems started. Inappropriate posts, arguments and bullying appeared. A spamming gambling bot that posted a new story every 0.5 seconds hit us too. We weren’t ready for this. We ended up spending all our time and resources on moderation on the biggest game of Whac-a-Mole ever. For about three months, we couldn’t work on anything new as we were just handling the drama and spam. Any time we felt like we got ahead of it, more would show up.

Lesson: Perfect moderation is hard to achieve, even for giants like Facebook. Always be prepared with a solid plan and expect moderation challenges.

For about three months, we couldn’t work on anything new as we were just handling the drama and spam

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Ask any founder in content, publishing or storytelling what they lose sleep over and they will tell you distribution. It’s the key factor that simplifies everything else. With millions of users, it’s easier to form partnerships, attract high-quality content and find more ways to grow and make money. Though I knew how important traffic was, we still didn’t focus enough on it at Commaful. Here are some insights from our efforts.

• Paid advertising: This works well if you’re making money from it. Chat-fiction apps like Hooked and Yarn grew fast because they earned more from ads than they spent. But be careful—without a solid plan, you can lose money. TikTok managed huge ad spends because it had a very big budget.
• SEO: It’s effective if you target the right keywords with enough search volume. However, Google’s changes can affect your visibility. Reedsy grew by creating high-quality publishing content for authors that attracted lots of visitors.
• Social media: The biggest opportunity in social right now is short-form video. With CharacterHub, we’ve been making content on Tiktok and Instagram reaching millions with zero ad spend. This can cap out, but if you’re entertaining you can get a lot of free reach.
• Influencers: Like ads, using influencers can boost your growth if it’s cost-effective. Influencers can offer trustworthy and entertaining content, but they’re harder to manage at scale. For example, Radish Fiction, an app for serialised fiction, worked with Wattpad creators to build its initial audience.

Lesson: Lack of traffic is a big reason why publishing start-ups fail. Don’t underestimate the need for a strong traffic strategy.

I just shared three tough lessons from our start-up journey, but I want to finish on a high note about what makes building a publishing start-up special.

We often start projects because we want to make a difference and do something exciting. It’s easy to lose sight of that amid all the hard work. However, the real joy in building something like a publishing platform comes from its impact on the community. At CharacterHub, we receive weekly messages about how our site has transformed lives, inspired people to keep creating comics, and more. My favourite stories are those in which creators share how CharacterHub reignited their love of creating while on the brink of quitting. With Commaful, people have told us how the platform encouraged them to take writing seriously, helped them through tough times, fostered deep friendships and more.

In other words, there’s something truly magical about enabling people to create. So don’t be disheartened by the challenges. Go ahead and start your start-up. We need more innovators to make some magic and positively impact the book world.