The Challenge
A leading platform supporting indie authors recognized that their users often struggled with book positioning specifically, crafting the right angle, genre alignment, and market strategy for their manuscripts.
This task required significant editorial oversight and human time, which limited scalability. The goal was to enable authors to generate high-quality, personalized reports automatically, based on their manuscript and publishing goals.
For the platform, this wasn't just about convenience. It was about transforming authors into data-driven authorpreneurs, and doing so without inflating costs.
A Day in the Life: Before Our Solution
An author uploads a new manuscript and asks “How should I position this in the current fantasy market?”
A human editorial team reviews the manuscript, searches competitive books, analyzes tone and genre, and crafts a detailed report. It’s a process that would take weeks.
Only a handful of authors received this level of input. Most had to figure it out alone, leading to poor metadata, misaligned categories, and missed audiences.
Pain Points:
- Editorial teams were overwhelmed by report volume and the time required per manuscript
- Many authors lacked the expertise to position their books for success
- Manual research into comparable titles and markets was slow and inconsistent
- The service could not scale with demand, creating access inequality
- Lack of automation limited the platform’s ability to serve more authors