Fresh from the Oven

Crowd-publishing in the publishing and media industry: The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the European Social Fund, and the European Union are providing funding for the business project “Bookbakers” in the EXIST startup grant program. The university spinoff offers simple solutions for communication and production in the publishing industry. The startup will receive more than 135,000 euros in funding. Among those contributing to the project are students and graduates of the Department of German. Dr. Harald Baßler, managing director of the Department of German, and the University of Freiburg’s Founders Office are supporting and advising the project.

The project is divided into two products: Bookbakers, a crowd-publishing platform and service provider, and Scriptbakery, a publishing program for digital manuscript analysis and management. The concept allows many people to collaborate on the realization and funding of a work. The following students and graduates of the University of Freiburg, Aix-Marseille University, and Furtwangen University are participating in the project: Tony Franzky, Lisa Helmus, Dominic Lammert, Sevda Mahmutović, Michael Klaus,  Géraldine Al-Nemri, and Jonas Navid Al-Nemri.

Bookbakers gives publishers an introduction to crowd-publishing. This is a tool for things like online marketing or brand and community building, that is, for establishing a brand identity and creating a community to spread the word about and promote the brand. The readership should be actively involved in the creation and production of the works. This enables publishers to reach new target audiences.

Scriptbakery digitalizes the acceptance and management of manuscripts and provides publishers with a tool for analyzing texts with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Up to now, many submissions to publishers have been rejected without having been read due to time constraints; correspondence by mail requires a lot of resources. With Scriptbakery, authors enter relevant data for the publisher and upload the manuscript. The AI analyzes the texts, compares the results on the basis of various criteria, and visualizes them, providing the editors quick access to the text.

The EXIST startup grant provides funding for students, graduates, and researchers at universities and non-university institutions conducting knowledge-based or technology-oriented projects.

More information on the EXIST startup grant program

The websites of Bookbakers and Scriptbakery

www.bookbakers.de

www.scriptbakery.de