Publit will revolutionize the publishing industry

On Tuesday, October 30, I meet Per Helin, founder of Publit, in a seminar room at the Nordic Embassy in Berlin. This is the first time we are in the German capital in connection with Nordic Tech Week. The event is an attempt to improve cooperation between Nordic and German businesses in the IT and telecom sectors. Per himself has just been on stage to talk about his company Publit and his ambitions to break into the German market. The sights are set high, and the possibilities seem endless. In the quiet murmur of straggling listeners, our conversation begins.

Don't panels sometimes get a bit scattered at events like this?

- Yes, but it's telling for tech. What is tech today? Or what will tech be in ten years? Maybe we should ask ourselves instead, what is not tech?

You said earlier that you have a background in the music industry, and now you run a digital book publishing company...

- No, it is not a book publisher.

What would you call it?

- It's a software company. A publisher makes a living by reselling authors' copyright as a physical book or whatever. We don't do that, we build a platform that book publishers and publishers can use to reach the market. Nowhere do we claim anyone's copyright. We open up the ecosystems and allow publishers to get a good reach on their publication and also to analyze data on what is happening. Then our customers can be publishers who only want to print 25 copies of a book, or publishers who want much larger editions. Publit is simply a software company in the book industry that has constructed a solution for business models.

This will somehow revolutionize the publishing industry.

- Yes.

And there are many things in media that have been revolutionized in recent years. What do you think will happen in the future?

- On the one hand, I think that in the media industry in general we will see even more consolidation of larger players, because you need to build your own platforms, and that is extremely costly. But at the same time, we will see an increasingly defragmented market in the undergrowth. It will be faster, and smaller players will be able to get started faster; from day one you can start printing books. The industry will simply become more agile.

More platform economy in media

You mean there will be more platform economy in media?

- Yes, a bit like that. To understand what it does to the economy, I can give an example. One of our biggest customers uses our service as a central part of publishing their books. A person who creates a book publishing company today can get the same product as the big players. In principle, there is no longer any advantage to being big - the advantages that exist will change anyway. Today, 80% of music distribution is already done through Spotify. It's hard to see what additional benefit a record company creates. I believe that future developments in this direction will be rapid.

Now you had to sit on a panel. What will you take away from this?

- There's a lot of exciting things happening in Berlin, and I love the German perspective in my panel. I like the gritty way. It's interesting to hear how difficult it is for them to find their own innovative power, and how palpable it is that they are not willing to take risks. We also feel that when we are here. You very quickly start talking about security and balance sheets. It's a completely different feeling than back home in Sweden: "We think you're great, but now we're going to do some risk management." But as a Swede you feel: "What's the problem? We're just going to work together."

The publishing industry must change its ways

You've told us before that you have your sights set on Germany. How do you feel about that?

- I think it will be fine, but it will be very tough. The challenge will be to get the industry to change. It's the same challenge as in Sweden, but the advantage of the German market is that it's much more fragmented. There are many more companies; a large Swedish publisher is equivalent to a medium-sized German one. Therefore there are more opportunities. There is more competition between the companies. At the same time, of course, there is a concern about risk. So there are both advantages and disadvantages. You have to understand their reality, and we have now brought in people who understand the German publishing industry. Then there is the cultural challenge that everything has to be so very serious here.

There are often trends in technology development. What is the next big digital trend?

- I think the next big trend will be to ensure that information is accurate. Today, people are obsessed with linking blockchain technology to cryptocurrencies and the like - they're looking for commercial applications - but I think it's going to be uninteresting in the long run, a bit like talking refrigerators. It may have been cool when it was invented, but who cares now? A relevant question is how to ensure that my data is my data and that the information you get is accurate. Using blockchain technology for that, I think that will be the next big trend.