In your own words, what does your company do?
Reedsy is a marketplace connecting authors to the world’s leading publishing talent, from editors to cover designers, marketers, ghostwriters, or literary translators. Not only do we make it easy to work with, say, Neil Gaiman’s editor, or GRRM’s cover designer, we offer a whole wealth of content and innovative tools to teach any writer how to craft and publish a successful book.
📈 Monthly revenue: Do not wish to disclose
📈 ~% Churn: N/A
📈 ~% Net profit: Do not wish to disclose
📈 Funding: $1.1M
📈 Initial cost/investment to start the company: N/A
📈 Number of team members: 42
📈 Number of founders: 4
📈 Started: 2014, June
How does the company make money?
Reedsy is a marketplace. As such, we don’t offer any services ourselves — instead, we make it easy for authors to approach and get quotes from a vetted community of publishing professionals, across various services:
💰 Editing: you can learn more about the different types, and average costs of editing here.
💰 Design and illustration: you can expect to pay in the $500-$1,000 range for a professional cover design.
💰 Ghostwriting: costs will vary greatly from one genre (and ghostwriter) to another.
💰 Marketing: coaching sessions will start at $200-$300/hour with most marketers.
💰 Translation: the average cost for a professional literary translation is around $0.10 per word.
3 strategies that have worked to attract and retain customers?
✅ Content marketing: We realized early on that offering education (in the form of free content) was key to the success of our marketplace. After learning the ropes of search engine optimization, our blog now attracts 2m+ organic visitors every month, and our YouTube channel has grown to 135k+ subscribers.
✅ Partnerships: Over the years, we’ve cultivated relationships and friendships with some of the most influential people in the self-publishing sphere. They know they can safely recommend Reedsy to any aspiring author who comes to them for advice, which in turn drives high-quality leads to our marketplace.
✅ Conferences and events: Nothing beats meeting people in real life. Most of our best connections in the industry were forged during writing conferences and events. These also give us access to hundreds — sometimes thousands — of authors, all in one place.
3 things that you’ve learned about hiring and retaining great talent?
✅ Leveraging assignments in the recruitment process: we have found technical assignments to be a key part of our recruitment process, no matter the role. Not only do they allow us to test the hard skills of the candidate, but they are also a great way to judge their communication style, and whether it would fit within our team.
✅ Daily standup meetings: being a remote company, it’s important for us to make sure everyone feels part of a wider team, and ensure consistent daily communication across all teams. Each team in Reedsy has a daily standup meeting — or several, split by time zone, in the case of bigger, spread-out teams.
✅ Face-to-face time: as I mentioned before, nothing beats meeting people in real life, which is why we organize a yearly team retreat for all full-time employees. This is a purely social event focused on allowing Reedsians to get to know each other in person. We have found it to be a key element to retaining great talent.