Self-publishing resource company FastPencil is opening up its proprietary publishing platform to publishers and other enterprises. The move will extend the company’s reach beyond do-it-yourself authors and will permit other customers to design, publish and sell books in print and digital formats.
Talking to PW, FastPencil cofounder and CEO Steve Wilson touted his company’s end-to-end, fully-customizable branding capabilities. For publishers, FastPencil allows cloud publishing and affordable licensing opportunites, fully scalable to the size of the publisher. FastPencil publishers can write, edit, and collaborate on the platform, and publish to pre-established channels, selling books and e-books online or in stores, all under the imprint’s name. For enterprises, such as companies that may ahve content that want to publish, services include the ability to co-brand or white-label under that company’s branded imprint, as well as the choice to deploy a customized platform either in the cloud or within its own data center. The goal for FastPencil for enterprises is to cut costs, decrease time-to-market, and instantly produce multi-format books and e-books.
FastPencil’s new interface works the same as its interface for authors, except for the fact that users set up a publisher account instead of an author account, so that all the content is under that publisher’s banner or imprint. FastPencil’s two-fold business, content and technology, has seen success in the former, and now FastPencil’s efforts are focused on leveraging it with the latter. Said Wilson: “We are trying to create the best customer experience from start to finish.”
Ultimately, Wilson said, the extension of FastPencil grows the company’s reach from authors to “anyone who has content.” Wilson also promised future announcements around the time of BEA in June.
