The OxyMorons -- S2E2 – A Conversation with Ricardo Fayet, co-founder of Reedsy.com
One of my personal OxyMoron projects was to discover the story of my mystery vanished grandparents and turn that story into a book. Along the way, I discovered Reedsy.com, a platform for connecting authors and contractors that is disrupting the publications business. So this post is a multi-headed OxyMorons post, both the story of a personal project and a story of technology disruption and innovation.
[BTW, my book is Immigrant Secrets and available on Amazon. Makes a great holiday gift!]
Here are highlights of my conversation with Reedsy.com co-founder Ricardo Fayet. Any errors in curation are mine.
What is Reedsy?
We started Reedsy.com in 2014 and the concept at its core hasn't really changed that much. We're basically a marketplace, connecting people who are looking to publish their book with all the freelance help they can need at any stage to make that book a reality.
On the freelance side, we're talking about all sorts of editors, from developmental editors to copy editors and proofreaders. For those who need help on the design side, our freelancers include cover designers and illustrators, as well as interior designers for more complex photography or children's book projects. We have ghostwriters for people who have a story, but they don't necessarily have the time or the skills to write it themselves. Our freelancers include book marketers and website designers and lastly, we recently added translators for those having success in the English-speaking market, and want to branch off into German, French, Italian, and Spanish.
How did you get the idea for Reedsy?
It was my co-founder’s idea (Emanuel Nataf). We were both in university at the time. We were both very early adopters of digital reading; we didn't really know publishing from either the author or publishing side of things. But we knew it from the reader side. He used to import his Kindle content from across the pond because Kindles weren't available in Europe back then and I was reading on my phone with the Kindle app. We started to think about how digital reading changed book consumption, and what the implications were of this change for all the players in the process – authors, publishers, and agents.
That led us to look at the intersection of two trends. The first was the emergence of self-publishing. We found that a lot of the early indie authors were individually hiring freelancers to do all of the things that a traditional publishing company does – things like editing, formatting, design, and marketing. That connected with the second trend – at the time, many publishing companies were struggling and laying off full-time talent and/or replacing them with freelancers. And so, there was a large emerging pool of freelancers looking for gigs. So we decided to create a marketplace to bring both trends together.
How is Reedsy different from self-publishing companies?
When self-publishing companies first emerged, some companies viewed it as an opportunity to make money from indie authors, charging them higher than necessary prices for a series of bundled services. We have always tried to keep the best interests of authors at the heart of what we do. While it might work for some authors, most of the companies who sell self-publishing packages don’t necessarily do this. We believe it is important for authors to maintain control over their work. We don't want to bundle packages, because we really think that if you're going to have success as an author, you need to be able to learn about the different parts of the publishing business. Instead of offering packages, we provide as much educational content as possible so that people can become educated about the world of publishing, and then use our ala carte marketplace to hire the specific people that they need.
What were the biggest obstacles you encountered in making Reedsy a reality? How did you overcome them?
Even though it was a marketplace and we vetted everyone, when we first got into the business of selling services to authors, there was a lot of hesitation. People wondered whether we were legit and whether we knew anything about the industry – and in fact, we didn’t know that much about the industry when we started! But that didn’t last for long.
We started showing up at industry conferences and knew that one of the things we absolutely had to get right to show we were genuine was to curate the marketplace really, really well. We made a lot of freelancers angry in the beginning because we were very selective. We put many on a waiting list to get on the platform and told others that they just didn’t meet our criteria. But that inspired a lot of trust from the author side. After a couple of years we were seen as THE go-to place to hire very high-quality freelancers for pretty much any publishing task.
Tell me a bit about the underlying technology for Reedsy -- homegrown? off-the shelf? custom developed?
We built everything from the ground up. We did use a bit of open source in the beginning for our Reedsy Book Editor -- a free online writing tool allowing any author to format and create professional ePub and print-ready files in seconds. We used MailChimp for email marketing in the beginning, but then built our own email marketing software, which we haven't open sourced yet.
How do you go about the process of screening contractors?
We're known in the industry as the place to find world class professionals. We accept less than 3% of the freelancers who apply to have a profile and be listed on the marketplace. For example, almost all our editors come from traditional publishing, often one of the big publishing houses -- Penguin, Random House, Simon Schuster, HarperCollins, etc. Generally, they've worked on best-selling titles. We basically don't accept anyone who doesn't meet these very, very high standards.
The screening itself for freelancers is very simple. And because of that, it's very time consuming. We get freelancers to fill in a profile -- just like a LinkedIn profile, basically -- and then we manually review every profile that gets submitted to us. We check that the information in the profile both meets our criteria and that it’s accurate.
There’s also a screening that needs to occur on the author side. Our freelancers are generally quite experienced, and so they know how to spot tricky authors from the get-go. That's how we avoid most problems. Sometimes we must ban an author just because they're sending so many requests to so many different freelancers. And no one wants to work with them, because everyone has spotted that they are going to be tricky or have unreasonable expectations.
If a dispute arises we have a formal mediation process in which we talk to both parties via email and compile as much evidence as possible. That's why we request that when you're on the site -- that whenever you hire someone -- you keep all the communication, all the written communication on site, because if there's ever a problem, then we can look into it.
Reedsy in general — and some of your videos in particular — do a good job of educating new authors and engaging them with the platform. Tell me a bit about how Reedsy uses content as a vehicle for engagement.
Content marketing is one of the main ways we connect with authors and get them to use the marketplace. We do have content for the freelancer/contractor side of things, but that’s a bit less important. Really good content directly ties to our search engine optimization strategy. A lot of people find us through blog posts on topics like “How to write a book.” These customers are very early in the funnel. We then provide free courses to help educate them about the business. The core idea is to get people to find us early on and educate them as much as possible about everything they need to know about writing and publishing the book that they want to publish. And then we make them aware that we’re there when the time comes to look for an editor or designer or marketer or ghostwriter. Our value proposition rests on our commitment to be the best place to find all those people.
What do you personally do when you come up against a brick wall?
When I hit a brick wall, I tend to get very frustrated and angry. Once I’ve hit my computer or screamed, I go for a walk. After my head is cleared a solution usually emerges to go over or around the wall. More complicated walls require more of a team effort, and I discuss things with other people and come up with a solution together.
What do you know NOW that you wish you knew THEN?
I wish I had understood the power of SEO. A pivotal moment in the company was when we realized that we had a blog that very few people read. It only had value to the people who already knew about us. When we started understanding and pursuing SEO, it radically changed things. When you provide a solution to a question that results from a search, you create a great positive first touch with a customer from a branding perspective. So yes, I wish I had known about SEO sooner.
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Some other OxyMoron stories that might be of interest…
S2E1 – How can you use Information Governance to change organizational culture
S1E8 – Information Management: How to Bridge the Generational Divide
S1E7 – How Can You Get Your Organization to Take Content Management Seriously
S1E6 – Creating an Information Strategy from Scratch – and at Scale