Quick Pitch: An ebook publisher that develops titles based on existing demand.
Genius Idea: Bloggers, content farms and news publishers alike have long leveraged search trends to uncover the information people are looking for and profited accordingly. But can the same model be applied to book publishing?
McKinsey alum Kevin Gao, whose startup Hyperink announced its first significant ($1.2 million) round of funding this week, believes so. (And so do his investors, apparently.)
Book publishers, he says, too often choose what to publish based on what they like rather than what they know will sell. Hyperink will instead find out what people want to read, largely by sifting through short and long-range search data. The company will then find authors to write short, highly targeted books on the topics people are searching for information about.
Think How to Get Into Yale rather than How to Get Into College, or a short history on Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs around the time of his death.
Hyperink is also welcoming pitches from aspiring authors, promising design, editing and marketing services in exchange for 50% of the royalties. Gao says the company is also interested in partnering experts who are less inclined to write their own books with journalists to co-author books.
Books are generally priced in the $15 to $25 range — a bit on expensive side for ebooks, but on the low end for business books.
Gao added that all of Hyperink’s books to date have been profitable within the first year of publication.
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