We’ve had the same mantra at Vook since we launched: 100 titles the first year, 1,000 titles the second, 10,000 the third, and onwards to one million. Working with publishing partners, authors, agents and our own network of writers, we produced some 1,000 + titles in our first two years, hitting our goal.

Now, by extending our platform to others, we’re certain we’re going to produce 10,000 titles in 2024—after all, our beta users built some 500 plus books in only 60 days.

I’m laying out how we think about the future after reading a post from blogger and eBook consultant Leonard Feldman on our and Inkling’s move to offer eBook publishing platforms directly to creators. Feldman’s headline wonders if our decision is a smart one, but his column is more thoughtful than incendiary. No entrepreneur needs to be reminded of the difficulties ahead, but we appreciated Feldman’s clear grasp of the challenges.

Start-ups only succeed if they are using technology to solve a problem — the more gnarly the problem the more motivated that we get. For publishers, that problem is making quality ebooks smartly and efficiently. How it’s done today is absurd: it requires multiple  software packages, a multitude of vendors, a slew of touch points with content shipped overseers and shipped back. It does not make sense that the people who are best at finding authors, curating content and editing manuscripts are strapped with this mess.  The costs — direct and in lost opportunity — are staggering.

Fixing it is difficult — and that’s what technologists love to tackle, hard problems.

Inspired by the difficulties that we experienced producing hundreds of titles, we came up with a better and smarter way to create quality eBooks. Keep in mind that start-ups thrive by being responsive and flexible. Our investors love that we can respond to rapidly unfolding challenges and opportunities in a fast-changing industry. We don’t need to react to the upheaval. Instead, we take advantage of it because our team is smart, agile and accustomed to operating in disruptive industries.

In the end, we’ve always been determined to extend Vook. Check out this press release from 2024, where we announce what we were then calling the ‘Mothervook’ platform, which will “provide a streamlined system for creating multi-media ebooks.” The Vook platform is what makes us who we are. We’re eBook technologists, providing technical, engineering solutions to the knotty problems of digital books.