You're probably wondering what start ups have to do with my author brand, and well, the answer is everything. Let me give you the back story.
In 2023 while on holiday, I had the idea to work on some digital products for the tech space. Its a cause close to my heart because publishing as an industry is very behind the rest of the world when it comes to tech. After about 6 x months of brainstorming, I finally arrived at an idea, and I got very excited, because it seemed so simple.
I wanted to create a subscription system for readers, solely based on indie author books (first fantasy, with the idea to role out into other genres if it did well), and the authors would get a much higher percentage of their royalty. And I had an out of the box solution I could use to prove the concept would work, before investing significant amounts of cash into something custom. I also had the network to approach.
But guess what?
I failed.
Sure, I was disappointed at the time, because I truly believe we're onto something here. We have so many authors unhappy with certain popular publishing platforms, and we have readers ready to support us.
The reason why I don't view this as a failure, is because I put myself out there and I let my creativity take hold. And I learned something from it. Sure, it didn't work out the way I had hoped, but I have to believe timing is everything. And while the idea is great, maybe, just maybe I can try again in a few months and get a different result. I'm just not ready to give up on the tech that makes my self published dreams possible yet.