Can we meet you?
Can you tell us about Publiseer and what it has to offer Nigerians?
Publiseer is the digital publishing company for the third world. Many young and budding authors and artists in Nigeria live on a dollar per day, just as in any third world nation, and thus cannot afford to publish their works by paying for the publishing process. As a result of this, these works remain unpublished for years. Most of these works are breathtaking and many of these authors and artists are exceptionally talented, but their talent is put to waste because they don’t have the money to pay for publishing. That’s what Publiseer was created to do. Publiseer was created to publish these beautiful works for free. Publiseer lets Nigerian authors and artists sell their books and music respectively, on over 400 major online stores worldwide, including Amazon, Google Play store, and Apple store. Publiseer is the lifeline for every young and budding Nigerian author and artist. Even more so, for established Nigerian authors and artists, who are seeking for ways to sell their work on the World Wide Web. It’s critical for authors and artists to reach their fans and attract new fans that rely on trusted stores like Amazon, Google Play store and Apple store to drive their discovery experience.
What is the motivation behind setting up Publiseer?
How you make money if you publish books and distribute music for free?
When a unit of any work (book or song) we publish is sold, Publiseer shares in the revenue. Also, for artists and authors intending to fast-track their publishing — instead of waiting for 2 weeks — Publiseer charges a sum for them to boycott the long queue of submission straight to the front, and get their work published immediately.
How will you describe the reception of Publiseer by Nigerians?
The reception has been more than we expected. Since August 2017, when we launched, we have published over 70 books and distributed over 200 songs, at no charge. We haven’t run any paid advertising campaign. All our clients knew about us via word of mouth. Publiseer has become a viral solution ever since.
Copyright and piracy are huge problems in Nigeria. Does this affect your business and how is your startup dealing with this?
Publiseer is a finalist at Harvard Business school’s New Venture Competition 2018. How do you feel about making the final?
You are twins running a business. How will you describe the experience so far?
What are the challenges of running your startup?
Some authors send in their manuscript via snail mail. They expect us to re-type it, and that’s not what we are. Publiseer only accepts book submission via digital file formats like DOC or DOCX formats. We only copied the manuscripts for spelling and grammatical errors and format them to industry standards. We do not offer typing services. The same challenge we have with experienced artists. They think we are a recording studio that can turn them into recording artists. Again, that’s not what Publiseer is. We are not a recording studio. We are only for already recorded artists. We distribute already recorded songs. We do not record songs for artists, although we offer free re-mastering services for songs that have poor mastering quality.
