Ten (+One) Newish Publishing Technology Start-ups

Sellfy is an e-commerce platform that enables anyone to sell digital products directly to their fans and followers using just a link. Whether it's an e-book, music, video, photos, software, or any other type of digital content, just upload your product, enter the price and start selling on Twitter, Facebook or your own website. Sellfy takes care of file storage, payment processing and product delivery to the end customer.



24symbols is a service to read digital books on the Internet based on a subscription model. It's like a Spotify for book.

Marquee is a flexible publishing platform that helps you craft great content for your audience. It operates as a fully hosted service, or can integrate into your existing workflow.

Livrada creates and distributes e-book cards at retail. Each Livrada gift card represents a specific title, and can be redeemed wirelessly on Kindle, NOOK and Kobo platforms (more to follow). Livrada makes the browsing, discovery, and gift giving of digital content tangible, and gives digital content a presence in stores. Livrada also works with authors to sell, promote, and give away their digital works at live events. Finally, we work with organizations to distribute e-books in bulk.


Medium is a new place on the Internet where people share ideas and stories that are longer than 140 characters and not just for friends. It’s designed for little stories that make your day better and manifestos that change the world. It’s used by everyone from professional journalists to amateur cooks. It’s simple, beautiful, collaborative, and it helps you find the right audience for whatever you have to say.


GENWI is a cloud-based smartphone and tablet app publishing platform continues to push forward in the mobile app development space, today launching an iPad app publishing solution and mobile content management system (CMS). As the company’s evolution has led it to a focus on providing media publishers with tools to create and manage newspaper, magazine, and catalog apps for iOS and Android, the iPad app solution is a logical extension to prior platform iterations — especially with the escalating adoption of tablets, specifically the iPad, as a content production tool and a source for some of the best (and most well designed) media apps. (Techcrunch)




Draft, a streamlined online word processor with version control, is getting deeper into the new professional publishing ecosystem.  The one-man team of Nathan Kontny has just introduced a new REST API that’ll let any news outfit or other publishing organization connect Draft to the other software it uses. If you’re BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post* or another media company with a big mix of full- and part-time writers, you could use the API to let writers and editors work through versions together in Draft then publish straight to your custom content management system. (Techcrunch)


7write wants to provide better writing software for wannabe authors, help them market their work in better ways and help them sell across multiple markets including digital and print.  (Techcrunch)




Pressly mobile publishing platform is designed to help brands, marketers and traditional publishers succeed in the growing world of tablet and smartphone reading. A flexible, turn key solution, there are a number of creative ways you can use it to drive results and engage your audience.


Open Air Publishing is a leading digital-first nonfiction publisher. Our team is redefining what a “book” can be by creating reading experiences tailored for touchscreen devices.  Examples of the platform technology are found here: BetterBooks Library

Master Your DSLR Camera: A Better Way to Learn Digital Photography from Open Air Publishing on Vimeo.


Graphicly provides authors and publishers the simplest and most cost-effective access to digital content conversion and distribution, across every marketplace imaginable, with comprehensive actionable insights on reader behavior.