Productized Service Platform for Self Publishing from Freelancing with Ceri Savage of Savage Edits
Meet Ceri! She is a British writer and editor based in Berlin. After graduating with a Literature degree, she picked up freelancing which turned into a self-publishing company, Savage Edits. In this episode, we talk about the transition from freelancing, self-publishing, hiring in an early-stage startup and more.
Here are the highlights we picked from the show. If you feel like listening to the whole episode, go to Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
What’s your story? How did you end up here? 📚
I studied literature at university in England. When I graduated, I went straight into freelancing as a content and copy writer. One day this guy messaged me that he had written a book and wanted to self-publish it and asked me if I wanted to edit it. Together, we learnt a lot more about the self-publishing process.
I saw a lot of gaps in the market. A lot of people would come for editing and then they would ask me for recommendations of where they could find a book cover designer, for example. And I was like, this is silly. I should be offering this service to them instead of just pointing them in the direction of someone else. So I really saw this need for all the self-publishing services to be in one space with one person that they trusted.
What’s the problem that you saw? ❌
The problem is that self-publishing is overwhelming. There are many steps to get to self-publishing your book. You have to write it, edit it, format it, design a book cover, then actually go through the actual process of self-publishing, which can be confusing itself.
The solution for that is that you can go to Savage Edits first. Then we guide you through the process from then on and you have everything that you need in one place.
How does self-publishing differ from traditional publishing? 🤳
Big book publishers with names that you recognise, for example, Penguin is a traditional publishing house. So they work in a completely different business model to self-publishing. They do everything upfront for you. You don’t have to pay any fees, but they’ll take royalties once your book is published.
It’s also super competitive. People who send out their manuscripts to traditional publishers, only 1% actually get accepted. So the 99% of everyone else has their book just on their laptop with nothing to do with it. That’s why, a couple of decades ago, self-publishing emerged. It gives writers a lot more freedom over what they want their book to be.
We don’t take anything. It’s 100% your book. We don’t own anything. You just pay us an upfront fee for each service of ours that you want.
Are you thinking of hiring more people? 🪴
I have already been working with some other editors in terms of expanding the workload. That’s kind of a small scale happening already. The whole thing with startups is that we want some big exponential growth. So the process of hiring is going to be much faster hopefully in the next year.
Do you think this is scalable? ⚖
That’s the biggest question that I’m asked in the startup world.
The scalability will come from the online platform and how much of that can be automated, especially in terms of setting people up with the resources and the services that they need.
Maybe not as scalable as other startups, but the market is huge. If we jump into it and offer this platform that no one else is offering, then it definitely has potential to scale.
You can find Ceri on LinkedIn and learn more about Savage Edits on savageedits.com.
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