Storial Explains Monetization of Digital Fiction Works and Content Exploration Efforts to "Intellectual Property"

The low level of reading literacy among the public is one of the reasons the book industry is less attractive in Indonesia. According to data VOA Indonesia, only 3% of the total publishers in the country are productive print more than 200 titles per year. Even then the production is only 3000 copies per title.

Armed with his work experience in related industries, Brilliant Yotenega seeks to disrupt the book industry, which has been running on a conventional model with technology. That way, anyone has access to a reading at a more affordable price. 

The man who is familiarly called Ega has built Storial, a platform designed as a marketplace for digital fiction.

How is Ega's journey in making Storial a curated and quality reading platform? Read the full summary of the interview DailySocial with Ega.

Digital fiction

One of the issues that writers often experience is the long way they have to go to publish a book. This does not include the time to find a publisher who is willing to accept the manuscript and publish it. 

According to Ega, it took about a year, from sending the manuscript, editing, production, to distribution. These factors make writers feel less appreciated and find it difficult to work because of income instability.

Before Storial, he said, he first founded Nulisbuku.com, a platform that allows authors to self-publish their books (self publishing). He developed Nulisbuku.com independently bootstrapped until now. However, currently Ega is no longer involved in the book production process. Meanwhile, Nulisbuku already has a community base of up to 100 thousand writers.

After the product market-fit, Ega is exploring other ways to disrupt the book industry by utilizing the community base it has at Nulisbuku.com. Here he founded Storial, a platform marketplace digital fiction stories where authors can more easily monetize their work.

Interestingly, Ega does not want to make Storial an extension of Nulisbuku.com on the same platform considering that both have different business models and target markets. Likewise with the entity. If Nulisbuku.com is synonymous with printed books on-demand whose process is carried out in a hybrid manner (O2O), Storial is marketplace for digital fiction works that are not published in physical book form.

"We have talked to many investors and VCs regarding [the book business model]. They are not interested because the book market and reading literacy in Indonesia are very low. There are rarely books for sale at stations or terminals, right? With Storial's position, we think cost it will be cheaper because it doesn't print books. Book prices in Indonesia are quite expensive compared to other countries in Asia. "Maybe because distribution costs are high because we are an island country," he explained.

With this business model, Ega can accelerate Storial faster than producing physical books. Currently, Storial has more than 150 thousand book titles. The number of users is around 500 thousand.

Monetization of works

Storial uses a scheme for selling a work individually (retail) so that the price is more affordable for readers. Per chapter (chapter) can be purchased for a minimum of IDR 2.000 to IDR 10.000.

Take for example a Storial story containing a total of 50.000 words divided into 50 chapters. Each chapter contains 1000 words and is sold for IDR 2.000. Prices are determined according to agreement with the author.

According to Ega, this price fits the reader's pocket when compared to buying a physical book. The reason is that buying a physical book means buying the whole book, meanwhile, there is the potential for readers not reading it to the end. This is different from the Storial model, when users only buy the story chapters they want to read.

Apart from that, he believes that this scheme also benefits creators or writers. The author will earn 35% -50% of the income from the chapters sold. This portion is said to be much larger than that received from physical book sales.

"Writers are happy [with this scheme]. So far, when they publish books in big publishers, they only get 10% [of royalties]. Even then they receive it once every six months and writers cannot check the sales amount. At Storial, writers can monitor the sales of their works transparently "Payments can be withdrawn every month. This is something you can't get from conventional publishers," he said.

Therefore, he believes that the opportunities for digital books are greater because authors can easily monetize them and readers can buy them at affordable prices. Apart from that, there is other ecosystem support, such as payments that make transactions easier.

Content curation

One of value proposition what is superior is content curation and quality. According to Ega, Storial was founded thanks to input from its writer community base who wanted to meet readers through the application.

By releasing works individually, authors can find out input and criticism from readers directly. Apart from that, he wants Storial to be positioned as a platform that has content from authors whose quality can be on par with books published in bookstores.

"I think, after the explosion creator economy In this case, there will be a time when the content is selected by itself. Why? People will get more and more overwhelmed with lots of content. That's why we think quality is what will bind the people who own it value the same term law of attraction," he said.

Ega believes it is important to curate because "natural selection" on content will take a long time. Overall, society needs to learn to create stories that can commits with readers rather than following trends that are easily forgotten.

Currently Storial has 150 thousand titles with 50-100 titles coming in per day. It is targeting one million users this year.

Strategy to boost the market

Ega admitted that one of the big challenges in building Storial was strengthening the writer and user community base. Despite the increasingly established development of the digital ecosystem in Indonesia, the digital book reader market is still very small niche.

In general, Indonesia is ranked 62nd out of 70 countries, or the 10 lowest countries in terms of ranking reading literacy low according to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey in 2019.

Therefore, Ega admitted that he was interested in exploring the Intellectual Property (IP) business model to accelerate his business growth. For now, Storial is still completely focused on fiction and content audiobook. However, he sees that the average Indonesian person prefers audio-visual based content. 

"Currently, Storial's strength lies in IP content. Well, this can be explored in various things, such as short films, series or feature films. In the big picture, this can be a new source of income, so it's not just from reading content, " he said.

To realize this idea, he said he needed more than just investment capital support. Moreover, Venture Capital (VC) is considered less interested in business models in the book industry because the acceleration is not as fast as sectors such as e-commerce or fintech. Storial ever get pre seed from the Salim Group (2018) and the SKALA accelerator program (2019).

The key is to collaborate with strategic partners who can leverage Storial's content assets become audio-visual content. Ega said he had sold several stories to Storial for films and series, but Storial was not involved in the production process. If you can get involved, there is an opportunity to accelerate the business.

“In the next round [of funding], we want to partner with strategic partners which can provide, not only capital, but also other support to OTT, media and production houses. Currently we are talking to companies [that have that ecosystem], but we can't yet disclose," he said.

For now, he added, Storial will still focus on developing the platform and features according to user needs. One feature being considered is direct interaction between writers and readers. It is hoped that additional features and platform improvements will strengthen the community base at Storial.

"Now we are focused Improve application for more reliable this year. After all, this is Storial's core business. We're not the first to develop a platform like this, but we have a large community of writers and a team of editors who curate it. "Until the time comes to talk about big strategy, we will focus on presenting quality content," he concluded.