Édith & Nous is a digital platform created in 2020 that simplifies the procedures for authors who wish to publish a book, whether they are confirmed and already published authors or authors who wish to find a publishing house for a first novel.
Behind this application, Valentin Vauchelles and Thomas Vivien, two french founders familiar with the publishing world. Valentin was a leading manager at Virgin Megastore on the Champs Èlysées and Thomas previously was the director of the french subsidiary of Taschen, a german publishing house.
The application is a stunning success with more than 100 verified publishing houses looking for talents to publish, more than 14000 authors who have already sent they manuscript on the platform in the hope of being published and over 10 millions words read and analysed by the proofreading team.
The application is a stunning success with more than 100 verified publishing houses looking for talents to publish, more than 14000 authors who have already sent they manuscript on the platform in the hope of being published and over 10 millions words read and analysed by the proofreading team.
Valentin and Thomas are experts of the publishing industry, not in engineering and that was one of the key factors when they were looking for someone to build their app.
They were eager to find someone with deep technical expertise, of course, but also able to think about the product and make the appropriate tradeoffs without getting lost in the tech.
The engineering sector exploded after COVID, and hiring software engineers is now harder than ever with the expanding remote offers. But does it make sense to internalise the tech when it’s not your core business?
Valentin and Thomas think not, that’s why they finally decided to work with a freelancer like Axel to build momentum and see if it could match. After more than two years together, it’s safe to say it was a winning bet.
“Today, more and more startups rely on freelancers to delegate the side expertise where it belongs. I wanted to provide this, alongside the guarantees digital agency could offer, the best of both worlds” explains Axel, founder of bepo.
With bepo, Valentin & Thomas know exactly how much they pay every month, how fast the work is delivered and they don’t have to keep every tech subject in mind. They can focus on their business, and the young agency as a service support by delivering the best tool for it.
Build a SaaS like Valentin
Valentin and Thomas are really satisfied with their feature coverage right now. Writers can send their books through the app, directly to the publisher through their website, and Edith & Nous also supports calling for texts in case publishing houses are running a contest, like Presse de la CIte did from September 2022 to January 2023.
The real challenge now is to educate authors on the realities of the publishing industry. Being published is a long-term process and most of the people writing a book are not aware of it.
To help them read between the lines, bepo and Edith & Nous partnered on creating a writer workflow, with both free and paid resources to improve the overall quality of the texts. The startup also have a lot of ideas to improve it and give regular authors the missing keys to become real professional as per the industry standards.
Even if the project might seem simple in appearance for tech aficionados, it uses a lot of popular technologies such as React or GraphQL, both developed by Meta for Facebook. Edith & Nous also runs mostly on cloud powered services, reducing the amount of support and monitoring to the minimum. But if you listen to Axel, the tech is rarely an issue with Edith & Nous.
”The app is dedicated to people with a great appeal for written text, and not particularly fond of technology. How to create intuitive user interface and attractive user experience is the real problem here. The tech should serve that purpose, and we aim to go much further down this road in the next version of the product” happily describe the software architect.
What is the next step for the startup aiming to consolidate its position of preferred intermediary between writers and publishers?
A lot could be done, but right now the focus is on improving the author experience in the app, making sure the app is stable enough for further expanding the business. “2023 will be rich in projects!” write Valentin on his LinkedIn announcing the collaboration between Edith & Nous and the communication agency Justement.
“After more than two years working on product development, we have worked on a lot of features and it’s quite normal we reach some limits on how fast we can ship and how much we can do.
We are really proud of how much we have achieved with Edith & Nous, and we are really looking forward developing what we refer as the v1. ” explains Axel with pride.
Edith & Nous is the first tech actor in publishing and culture, a centuries old industry having trouble taking the digital turn. The goal is simple: simplify the process for publishers receiving hundreds to thousands of books per year, and unable or unwilling to read them all due to a mismatch between publishers and writers.
The young startup wants to establish itself as an intermediary between authors and publishing houses by offering security, proofreading and relaying of texts. Use the blockchain to protect authors' manuscripts by giving them a means of defending themselves in the event of a dispute, such is the innovation proposed by Edith & Nous.
There are more and more digital platforms promising to put manuscripts online or to publish them. Proofreading, corrections, models, online sales, dedications: what are the services offered to amateur authors really worth? The youngest, Edith & Nous, promises direct access to publishers thanks to a powerful matching algorithm.
Made with ❤️ by Axel VAINDAL
