Company spotlight: Ether Books

Sometimes it is not such a good thing to be ahead of your time. Attendees of the London Book Fair in 2010 could not fail to notice the splashy launch of Ether Books. The dedicated mobile digital reading platform was then  short story only, and its initial list included bespoke content from heavy-hitters such as Hilary Mantel, Lionel Shriver and Maggie O’Farrell. 

Co-founder and c.e.o. Maureen Scott was making the rounds at LBF 2010, speaking at seminars, she admits now, to somewhat bemused audiences. She says: “I think the iPad had just shipped a couple of days before [LBF]. Publishers were only starting to get their heads around the Kindle and how to deal with that. I think they were thinking: ‘Oh no, now I have to think about mobile as well?’ We may have been about five years too early.”

In the intervening half-decade Ether has not stood still, rejigging its platform and core functionality. It has remodelled and evolved from a short-form reading service at its launch into an app that combines Goodreads-style social reading and discovery and Wattpad-esque community-based story sharing, with content from both indie and traditionally published authors.   

Scott says: “Our whole premise is being able to publish any length of content, working directly with writers and publishers, but also having a service curating indie writers. Curation is crucial because the user experience matters. A lot of people think they can write and many can’t; you don’t want to clog up your app with a bunch of crap. We’ve modelled it on the Apple ecosystem in that every Apple app has to be approved and adhere to a certain standard.”

A Minnesota native but resident in the UK since the mid-1990s, Scott has been in mobile for almost her entire career, with roles at various pioneering Silicon Valley smartphone software developers. Ether’s co-founder Mike Jones was formerly chief technology officer at singer Peter Gabriel’s OD2 and several other digital start-ups. Current chief technical officer Tree (yes, his legal name is just Tree) has headed the tech departments of digital gaming and music businesses. With that wealth of experience, the company is pretty clear-eyed about the market, but also realistic regarding the climate that has seen the demise of several of the UK’s book-related digital start-ups in recent months.

Scott says:  “I would suggest we’ve survived that first wave of book start-ups because we’ve played a slow game. It hasn’t been easy—the product was a bit early, and we’ve essentially had to fund time. But we have learned a lot.”   

Part of the difficulty for start-ups in the digital space is, of course, Amazon’s current e-reading dominance. Scott is optimistic. “Things can change,” she insists. “What I would say to an investor is that once Microsoft had a 90% stranglehold on the market, and where is Microsoft now? We are a software company; Amazon is a software company. But we can change the business model, pull an Airbnb where we can charge about 5% [to publishers], plus have other revenue streams like advertising. We just need more content to get that scale.”

Helping with that content side is Andrew Hayward, former Constable & Robinson sales and marketing director, who came aboard as Ether m.d. in 2014 to build closer links with publishers. It is working so far, with publishers such as Wiley, Accent Press and C&R partnering with Ether, and a “big announcement” imminent. 

“The building blocks are there, the technology, the platform is there,” Scott says. “Now we just need to have some fruitful conversations with more publishers. It’s not like it was five years ago; I think they’re ready for us.”