2011456 Caselet 4: Business Unusual Aditya Bhat

Caselet-4

Introduction

The shift in reading habits of people from physical books to digital forms of books and book
derivatives has made the entire process easier and more accessible. But there are multiple issues
that organizations who have ventured into this have been facing from the beginning. As mentioned
by Ms. Chiki Sarkar, a few of them faced by publishers are the lack of non-technical readers in India,
the ever-lasting issue of pricing difference between physical and digital copies and the major issue of
erratic and non-uniform cashflow owing to the creative nature of the business.

Business Model

The suggested organization to overcome the above-mentioned issues as well as tackle the 4
objectives mentioned in the caselet would have a for-profit corporate structure and will mainly be a
digital based organization. The services would be provided to the customers through a mobile/tablet
application along with a website for desktop/laptop users.

Revenue Model

The pricing or revenue model would be based on a pay-per-book model with a certain renting period
for each book. The customer would rent the certain book for a week/month and would pay the rent
amount before the renting period with an option to extend the period as required. Since all major
reading platforms have their own subscription models, adopting a similar subscription model would
be comparatively difficult since establishing the credibility of the company in presence of current
incumbents is a major task. Hence the organization would follow a model similar to an online library
with extended features and customizable/flexible options. Since the revenue is based on a renting
model, the fees charged from the customer would be very minimal which subsequently, will help in
popularizing the organization.

Governance/Structure

The organization will be divided into separate verticals based on the different types of offerings such
as novels, short stories and poems, audio books, along with an overarching digital team working on
the software development. These verticals would further be divided into genres for the purpose of
on boarding and sourcing content into the platform which would follow a matrix structure since
these genres would be common for each of the verticals.

Customer base expansion

To organization would target multiple age groups, right from kindergarten kids, all the way up to
senior citizen. Since the books being made for children under the age of 7 are most suitable for
digital formats, such books would be perfect to attract such customers(parents). Interactive and
engaging e-books which would include various features such as sound, vibration, display, video-
based characters in such books would lure the customers of that age group. Similarly for senior
citizen, the books would have special features such as read-aloud and slow narrative for customers
suffering from old-age issues.

Multi-segment focus

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2011456 Caselet 4: Business Unusual Aditya Bhat

With short stories and poetry segments gaining steam in the publishing industry, these segments
would be focused on since they do not require the same amount of dedication as full-length novels.
A paywall would be used to provide an initial part of the story or poem to the user for free but would
require the user to pay the rent amount to unlock the rest of the story or poem. Software security
features to ensure that screenshots or screen recorders do not function while using the application
would be developed to stop piracy similar to Netflix. Amazon Prime or other similar service providing
applications.

Sourcing and Promotion

The content for the platform would be sourced mainly from newer authors based on the genre that
they specialize in. There would be a few best-sellers to pull in crowd into the platform, but the major
focus will be on new-age writers and pages which are looking for ways to monetize their writings.
This will aid the organization in 2 ways; the first one being the word-of-mouth publicity of the
platform through their friends and family since promoting local talent is widely popular on social
media; and the second one being the lesser amount of sign-on fees charged by the authors and
writers for lending their content to the organization.

Collaborations with pages such as ‘terribly tiny tales’ and ‘dreadit’ to promote such short stories and
poem will not only help to attract more readers into the application but also give an idea about the
content that would be available for the customers to browse from. Focus on realistic horror and
erotica in the form of exclusive sections will help to drive more customers towards trying the service.
Sample stories and books which would be free for all users will give a taste of the content that is
available on the platform.

Additional features

Other features such as including audio books in the platform will attract the busy urban adult who
would prefer listening to books as part of multitasking during the day. The similar paywall would be
applicable to audiobooks as well where the customer would be able to listen to the beginning part of
the story or novel and then be requested to pay the rent amount for the audio to continue. To
ensure the readers stick to the platform, an achievement or badges system would be implemented
where the users would be able to share their achievements such as 5 books/month, a-book-a-day,
etc as badges on their social media platforms. There would also be a leader-board of each category
which would get updated in real-time to show the top read content on the platform. In addition to it,
there would also be a trending option which would show the content that is currently trending
based on the genre and the category.