Friday, June 19, 2015

Crowdfunding Publishing CEO Speaks Out

Interview With Publishing Crowdfunder Pentian CEO Enrique Parrilla

How is Pentian different from Pubslush or Kickstarter? Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter are finance companies who are invested in seeing that they get paid a 'financing' fee. They take 5% as their 'cut' for raising money, and then another 3-5% is taken to pay the credit card processor, so up to 10% of the funds raised are paid upfront as 'fundraising costs' before the projects see any support.  Once the funds are raised, the campaign 'backers' do not benefit directly from the success of the book. With Pentian, the backers are putting up funds for both the satisfaction of seeing a work published, and to benefit from the financial success of the book as the funds they allocate to a publishing project will entitle them to benefit from the sales of the work once it is published.  Pentian does not take a 'financing' fee like Kickstarter.  Moreover, with Pentian authors receive 40% of the profits from the sales of their works, which is several multiples higher than what they receive from the traditional publishing industry.   It is a win-win situation - not only do the authors get to raise the funds necessary to publish their works, they get to keep a much higher percentage of the profits their work generates.

What progress has Pentian made since its launch last year? Because of our unique model that aligns authors and backers interests in a straightforward and fair model, Pentian has been very successful in raising more money for more authors than any other crowdfunded publishing site.  Today we are seeing a publishing campaign reaching its goal almost every day, meaning more great works from more authors are coming to the market than would have been possible otherwise. 

How does your system assess up to 400 manuscripts s day? We have a dedicated teams of editors and curators that focus on ensuring a diligent process for evaluating each work quickly and efficiently. Moreover, we have developed a unique system that uses technology to help us evaluate books faster, and predict more accurately how successful each work will be. 
This combination of people and technology is one-of-a-kind in our industry, and is a key differentiator between how we operate Pentian vs. every other publisher out there.

Where do you see self-publishing heading? Up.  There really is no other publishing model that provides such a democratic approach and allows authors that were previously left out of the publishing world, to have a shot at having their work make it onto the world's stage. 

What do you live about helping authors get published? It’s the surprise of seeing a work take off that we had not expected.  There are examples that I see almost daily where an author in a niche I was not familiar with, finds their voice and their audience and their work flourishes.  Its these surprises that keep us working hard and loving what we do every day.


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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015

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