The path to the first book took Volodymyr Usov longer than he had expected. In 2010 he bought his first iPad, and that was when the idea of interactive books came to him. Apple's tablet opened up new possibilities for pages turn with a finger, and inside you can place elements that don't fit on a paper page. Gutenbergz opened in Odesa in 2011. Usov started out with a developer friend, just the two of them, and by spring 2013 the team had seven people.
An Abridged Holmes and a Year's Delay
The first project was "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" for iPad: five abridged stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and about a hundred interactive pages. The choice of material is understandable. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature, and the reader doesn't need to get to know a new hero in order to appreciate the unusual format.
The book was sold through the App Store, Apple's app marketplace, where programs and e-books for iPad are added to the catalog after the company's review. The release was planned for December 2011 but took place on December 2, 2012. Usov did not hide the delay. "We were late. A year late!" he admitted in an interview with AIN.UA in March 2013.
"We were late. A year late!"
The delay had almost no effect on the budget. The launch cost $25,000, and according to the founder, within three months the costs had almost been recouped. During that time the book was downloaded 23,000 times, and more than 70 percent of sales came from the US. For a publisher from Odesa that was just starting out in the market, these figures looked convincing.
Twenty-Five Thousand and First Places in the Rankings
App Store rankings are updated constantly, so the first days after release are telling. On the first day "Sherlock Holmes" entered the top 100 of the US store, and on the second day it rose into the top 10. In China, Greece and a number of other countries the book took first place. For a project without a big name, such a start was notable.
Apple included the book in its "New and Noteworthy" selection, and banners advertising it appeared in the store. The selections are put together by the store itself, and being featured gives an app extra traffic. However, this did not bring explosive sales growth. The book sold steadily, but not fast enough to change the publisher's position within a few weeks.
Plans for 2013 and Next Steps
Usov spoke about plans for 2013. The publisher intended to release seven projects and subsequently reach ten books a year. A separate task was translating "Sherlock" into seven more languages. The next project was to be Gadgetarium. Usov explained his choice of topics simply: "These are exactly the kind of books I would like to read myself."
In 2013 Usov saw a 3D printer for the first time at an exhibition in New York. At the time the technology was still niche and almost unknown to the general public. For now, however, interactive books remained Gutenbergz's main business, and each new edition was built around the same question: how to make text interesting to read on screen.
In March 2014 Usov gave an interview to the Ukrainian publication Chytomo, which focuses on digital reading. The conversation then was about Gadgetarium and a GTF grant of 240,000 hryvnias. In the same conversation he said that he had previously headed the Odesa branch of Batkivshchyna and had left politics. By that time the publisher was already working on its next projects, and interactive books were becoming Usov's professional foundation.
On April 10, 2014, Gutenbergz's "Sherlock Holmes" was included in Chytomo's general presentation of interactive books at the Book Arsenal in Kyiv.
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