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Digital distribution as a core business.
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Focusing on emerging markets.
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Fragmentation and bureaucracy in the EU and risk adversity for bold ideas are key problems.
The 8th InternationalDigital Distributors Meeting is organised once more by IPDA in collaboration with GSR Foundation within the umbrella of Readmagine. In this occasion the challenge proposed to the participants was to discuss how to ensure the positive pattern in book markets continues throughout the next few years. This idea was linked to the European approach of this edition and focused on the means to overcome some threatening trends that underlie those good results (namely, the bigger role of huge platforms such as Amazon).
The main conclusion drawn from the previous works by Fundación GSR (Readmagine 2020) is that the publishing industry needs to rethink its own position and its value proposition because customer’ needs have changed. In response, organizations must adapt as far as how they position the value of their products and services within this new context. It seems to be clear that scaling digital transformation with analytics and automation might increase the value of the existing staff in publishing industry rather than just using digital to replace people.
Precisely, the first session was titled «Made in Europe to the world», moderated by Arantza Larrauri (Managing Director at Libranda) presented two different European business cases for digital books: Bookwire and Streetlib.
Streetlib is an Italian company for ebook distribution. Giacomo D’Angelo -CEO of Streetlib- placed their position as the «tech side of the business» and defined the goal of the company as «to empower publishers and content creators providing them a modern platform for managing their digital businesses».
Streetlib provides a platform for publishers of Ebooks, Audiobooks and POD-books (Print On Demand) and created a network of more that 70 distribution and subscription channels. The distribution is the foundation service for this company born in 2006 but now also provides other value such as production services, metadata and catalogue management, royalties and billing, business intelligence, digital Printing or marketing, among others.
This company is a very interesting example of an European start-up that is capable of growing internationally; in 2020 StreetLib managed around 500,000 digital items and paid royalties to ~ 7,200 publishers and creators distributed across 4 Continents.
In this video you can follow D’angelo’s description of the main challenges and achievements of his company.
His explanation about the principles of the company developed several ideas:
- Globally-inclusive approach: the platform is open to publishers of any size and from
- any country, with no up-front costs.
- Strive to build a truly-global distribution network of retailers, libraries and subscription apps.
- Adopt a gateway model in order to add value to the local publishing communities.
- celebrate different cultures and lifestyles in the team, also adopting an asynchronous and remote-friendly working environment.
After his presentation took place a very interesting dialogue between Larrauri (Demarque), Klingelhöfer (Bookwire) and D’angelo in this other video about internationalisation.
Giacomo D’Angelo is CEO at StreetLib. He drives the company’s strategy and international expansion with a global outlook and a special focus on the emerging markets. Giacomo combines a passion for the Internet and blockchain technologies with his love for books as the best tool for improving human potential.
