Renew the Book with Rockstart

For the second year in a row, Rockstart wants to Re-write the book on publishing with a 40 day deep-dive Innovation Program. Together with Dutch publishers group GAU, the accelerator is looking for five innovative startups who can apply their innovative ideas to the world of books and publishing. Also worth mentioning that there is € 15.000 prize money waiting for the startup with the winning ideas!

Why back to books?

With the arrival of e-readers & tablets the publishing industry is going through significant changes. At the same time it is facing increasing competition from the explosive growth in online video consumption. For startups the publishing industry is potentially a market with lots of opportunities. For example, in 2014 the worldwide publishing market made $103B in annual revenue, which was seven times the amount of the global music industry. And forecasts say the publishing industry will continue to grow in the coming years. Lots of reasons for digital startups to figure out how to apply their solutions to benefit good old-fashioned print media.

Forty Full-on Days

Rockstarts wants to renew the book with startups whose business relates to either the promotion, distribution or publishing aspect of the industry. The accelerator is now accepting applications. To get an idea what they’re after, here’s the promo-video for last year’s edition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB_rDlHHiyo

Class of 2015

The smiling kids in the picture at the top of this article are the five startups that participated in the first edition of Renew the Book. which ran from November 5th untill December 9th 2015. They were Italian books crowdfunding platform Bookabook, a Pinterest for cookbooks called Crumble, Romanian “litinderature” swipe-app for books Nugget, German popularity prediction platform Readgeek, and the winner: Dutch A.I. startup Bookarang that analyzes books through artificial intelligence. You can see them in action here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePMiHC788M&t=1s

Want to follow in the footsteps of these inspiring creative startups? Then why not Apply now! As mentioned the winning startup will walk away with €15.000. Hurry up though because applications close December 21st.