Is data the key to the future of publishing?

The pub­lish­ing sec­tor is not renowned for its data-dri­ven inno­va­tion, so when dig­i­tal ven­ture Cane­lo, which derives from “cin­na­mon” in Span­ish and Por­tuguese, was launched in ear­ly-2015, it added some much-need­ed spice. Pow­ered by a data strat­e­gy, Cane­lo set out to pub­lish a range of fic­tion and non-fic­tion titles as ebooks, apps and on the web.

At the time Cane­lo launched, led by founders Michael Bhaskar, Iain Mil­lar and Nick Bar­reto, ebooks were being hasti­ly con­vert­ed to PDFs. “The ebook is too often an after­thought; we want our ebooks to be beau­ti­ful,” says Bhaskar. “Every­one has talked about the future of pub­lish­ing for years; it’s time we actu­al­ly got on and made it hap­pen.”

Tech­nol­o­gy direc­tor Bar­reto, 33, adds: “We are build­ing a tru­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry pub­lish­er, with the tools and agili­ty need­ed to explore new oppor­tu­ni­ties to the full. Now is when things get real­ly excit­ing.”

Creating a digital-first publisher

Cane­lo has indeed spiced up the pub­lish­ing sec­tor and con­tin­ues to inno­vate, thanks to its data strat­e­gy and iden­ti­fy­ing a gap in the mar­ket to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty ebooks.

“When Cane­lo began, we felt pub­lish­ers weren’t focused on inno­vat­ing and chang­ing how they worked,” says Bar­reto. “Despite incred­i­ble growth in dig­i­tal read­ers, they’d plan and do every­thing with print in mind and, some­times lit­er­al­ly when it came to asset pro­duc­tion, work back­wards to dig­i­tal for­mats.

“It had been decades since any­one was try­ing to build a new kind of pub­lish­ing house. It got to a point where instead of try­ing to effect change from with­in the organ­i­sa­tions we were in, we decid­ed to start afresh. We reimag­ined things com­plete­ly for the dig­i­tal world.

Every pub­lish­er spends a lot of time look­ing at sales pat­terns and we’re no excep­tion. But we try to think and use data holis­ti­cal­ly

“We want­ed to build a pub­lish­er that was inno­v­a­tive, agile, respon­sive, dig­i­tal­ly native, giv­ing both read­ers and authors a bet­ter deal: cheap­er, more eas­i­ly acces­si­ble books and a fair­er roy­al­ty split on short licences for authors.”

Cane­lo approached the task with three val­ues in mind: sim­plic­i­ty, fair­ness and growth. “If we could do that, we felt we could dis­rupt the world of mass-mar­ket pub­lish­ing for the bet­ter,” says Bar­reto. There was plen­ty of ini­tial encour­age­ment from oth­ers with­in the pub­lish­ing sec­tor.

“Ear­ly on we were told by a lit­er­ary agent that our large­ly auto­mat­ed roy­al­ty reports were the best they’d ever seen. Even now we offer the high­est roy­al­ties on dig­i­tal sales. While we don’t pay any advances, even a mod­er­ate­ly suc­cess­ful book will like­ly be more finan­cial­ly reward­ing for an author thanks to the unique­ness of our offer.”

The real benefits of a solid data strategy

Due to its data strat­e­gy, Cane­lo con­tin­ues to be agile and has adapt­ed its orig­i­nal busi­ness mod­el and for the last two years it has pub­lished print edi­tions. “It start­ed as a tri­al in mid-2018 and because the inter­est in our titles was much greater than we were expect­ing, we quick­ly sold over a mil­lion paper­backs,” says Bar­reto.

Invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy has been para­mount. “The first batch of print books we released – 32 in total – were all type­set auto­mat­i­cal­ly in a sin­gle day. That process has only got bet­ter from there.”

Such com­mit­ment to tech and a robust data strat­e­gy has been crit­i­cal to Cane­lo and its con­stant evo­lu­tion. It has also enabled the organ­i­sa­tion to thrive in the last six months. “We were well placed to deal with the lock­down, most­ly as a result of being an inher­ent­ly dig­i­tal busi­ness work­ing entire­ly in the cloud,” says Bar­reto. “We are prob­a­bly also one of the few pub­lish­ers that did­n’t fur­lough any staff; in fact, we’ve accel­er­at­ed our growth plans for the future this year.”

How to do publishing differently

He empha­sis­es the impor­tance of Canelo’s data strat­e­gy. “Data has been at the heart of the busi­ness. Every pub­lish­er spends a lot of time look­ing at sales pat­terns and we’re no excep­tion. But we try to think and use data holis­ti­cal­ly. We use data man­age­ment in so many dif­fer­ent ways. Most of the inno­va­tion is behind the scenes, in our con­tract and offer, in our work­flows and deliv­ery mech­a­nisms, in our approach to authors and mar­ket­ing,” says Bar­reto.

As an exam­ple, he points to how Cane­lo has recent­ly updat­ed its entire work­flow so it can pro­duce ebooks and print edi­tions from the same source. “This process saves us a lot of time and ensures both edi­tions are always the most up-to-date and accu­rate ver­sion of a giv­en work,” he says. “Gen­er­al­ly, this sort of work­flow is only found in the largest organ­i­sa­tions and can be pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive. We’re only able to do this because we had great qual­i­ty data in the first instance.”

Offer­ing a final piece of advice for busi­ness lead­ers, Bar­reto adds: “Invest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy and hav­ing our own soft­ware exper­tise in-house has enabled us to take on loads of dif­fer­ent chal­lenges and punch above our weight in so many ways as we’ve grown. Ulti­mate­ly, it’s about embrac­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties of the age in which you find your­self.”

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