The closest that Amazon has come to fostering an online community for its readers is the acquisition of the social reading site GoodReads a decade ago. That role is, effectively, still up for grabs. print book market, and at least three quarters of publishers’ ebook sales.”īyteDance’s edge in books clearly lies in its sprawling social media empire where authors and fans can connect directly and readers can share their thoughts with others. Industry pundit Benedict Evans estimated at the end of 2019 that Amazon had “50% or more of the U.S. It’s also an insurmountable task to track all the books self-published through Kindle, not least because not all of them have their international identifiers, or ISBN numbers, as research group Wordsrated points out.Īmazon’s position as a popular publisher, distributor and hardware player (via the Kindle), however, likely gives it an outsized place in that market. There are scant data on online publishing and Amazon has never revealed much about the operation’s revenues, and, in cases when it does, it’s famously vague about these metrics. And where it would fit into what has shaped up otherwise to be a pretty fragmented market in the long tail. If ByteDance does wade into e-publishing, the question is how it plans to compete with the industry’s giant, Amazon, on publishing and distributing books. The mountain of user data and insight that TikTok has accumulated could be used to figure out what people like to read, and the same kinds of content recommendation algorithms that suggest videos on TikTok could be used to introduce new books to read on a separate app. While TikTok might not be directly distributing books, it can certainly help drive users towards the potential book app - as it has done for Lemon8 by recruiting influencers to promote the lifestyle-focused social media platform. It won’t be surprising to see ByteDance rolling out a standalone book app where users can, as the trademark registration suggests, read, download, buy and talk about books. ![]() TechCrunch has reached out to ByteDance for comment. That’s expected given the bite-size nature of short videos doesn’t square with long-form reads that require a longer attention span. The trademarking effort is “not related to TikTok” but ByteDance is “always exploring new opportunities,” according to a person with knowledge of the matter. ByteDance is likely eager to find new ways to monetize its hundreds of millions of users overseas. Though ByteDance posted a record profit last year as a whole, TikTok itself suffered widening losses, the Financial Times reported. The list of products and services registered with 8TH NOTE PRESS includes an app to read, download and discuss fiction e-books in an online community retail bookstore services ordering books in audio, printed and digital formats publishing e-books, audiobooks and physical books, as well as providing online, non-downloadable fiction and non-fiction books.Ĭorporations register trademarks all the time in anticipation of expansion into new verticals in the future, but they don’t specify timelines or hold the registrants to any obligations, so the move to trademark 8TH NOTE PRESS doesn’t necessarily mean ByteDance is taking any material steps into the publishing world yet.īut book publishing and distribution do sound like logical next steps for ByteDance given TikTok’s success in attracting book lovers to share under the #BookTok hashtag on the short video platform. The trademark filing was earlier reported by Business Insider. The trademark, which is called “8TH NOTE PRESS,” offers an interesting glimpse into ByteDance’s apparent e-publishing ambitions. Lemon Inc., a subsidiary of ByteDance, has submitted a trademark application for a range of book publishing products and services, according to a filing posted on the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). ![]() ![]() After aggressively promoting its new lifestyle social media platform Lemon8 in the U.S., ByteDance appears to be brewing another content app for its biggest overseas market.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |