The SaaS Podcast
How YC-Backed Startup Booktrope is Reinventing Book Publishing – with Katherine Sears [064]

How YC-Backed Startup Booktrope is Reinventing Book Publishing
Katherine Sears is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Booktrope, a web platform that allows authors, editors, marketers and designers to form a team and work together to create and market a new book. The company is based in Seattle and was founded in 2011. In this episode, we talk about:
- How Booktrope turned a simple idea into a new innovative category in book publishing.
- How the business launched and operated for 1.5 years with no software product.
- Going through Y-Combinator & the experiences/lessons learned by the co-founders.
- How Katherine used Twitter to build authority and attract new customers.
- What Booktrope did to start generating their first $1M annual run rate.
Book Recommendation
- “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell – Amazon.com
Links, Resources & People Mentioned
- Booktrope
- Worklife
- Wattpad
- Tess Thompson – @TessWrites
- Ken Shear – Publisher & CEO, Booktrope
- Andy Roberts – CTO, Booktrope
Contact Information
- Katherine Sears – @ksearsbooks | ksears [at] booktrope [dot] com
- Omer Khan – @omerkhan