April 1, 2025 • 63 mins
In this episode of Printing's Alive, Yehuda Niv from Spines.com discusses Spines' AI-based services and their impact on publishing and company growth. He contrasts AI with traditional publishing, highlighting benefits for authors and addressing misconceptions about AI and printed books. Warren shares insights on the industry's AI-driven evolution. Topics include Spines' market focus, brand strategies, collaboration with printing companies, and AI's role in content review. The episode also covers book production pricing, distribution options, new author tools, and the future of one-click publishing. Yehuda offers advice for aspiring authors and future collaborations.
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(00:08):
Hey, everybody.
Wanna welcome you back to Printing's Alive, theonly podcast that's here to promote everything
print everywhere, any kind of print.
So just a reminder to everybody, if you if youlike the podcast, if you wanna be on it for a
good reason with print, tell me.
If you know someone that should be on it, letme know as well.
Alright.
Let's get into it today.
Today, I have another special guest.
(00:30):
I know I say that because I love print andeveryone I talk to, I think they're super
special.
This one is a little bit super special, super,super special to me, not only because of what
they do, but because of where they come from.
And you all know I have a soft spot for Israel.
And for, I don't know why, and I had it on thefirst podcast, but Israel seems to be a really
(00:50):
big place for technology and print.
And today I have Yehuda Niv from spines.com.
Welcome or shalom.
Shalom.
Thank you for hosting me.
Oh, it's
a pleasure to have you.
So I came across the website just because Ilike AI and everything, but Spines is the first
(01:13):
AI based company in publishing in the world todo what they do.
When I, I didn't tell you what they did yet,but when I came across it, I was like, oh man,
I gotta get them on here.
I want everyone to hear about this.
So Yehuda, tell me, I have so many questions.
I'm gonna bang off a couple questions first,because then I wanna let you roll with what it
(01:35):
is.
So like, first of all, how did you get into it?
What were you thinking?
And really, what is the purpose and what areyou doing with it?
And then I'll ask you some more after, butlet's roll.
So maybe I'll start from the early beginning,where about thirteen years ago, I I published
my first book, And it I was back thenthroughout my master degree at electronics
(02:00):
engineering.
And I realized that the publishing process isbroken.
So I decided to boost up my own publishingcompany named Niv Publishing.
I wasn't that clever about the name though, Nivis my last name.
And it started in my dorm room when I was astudent, but it's good to become the largest
publishing house in Israel.
(02:20):
In Niv Publishing, we publish over 1,200 titlesevery year.
Just for reference, the next competition inIsrael can publish about 300 titles a year.
So we are four times larger and quicker thaneveryone else here.
And about five years ago, I finishedstructuring the management team in NIV
publishing.
Finally, got my life back.
(02:41):
I could rest a little bit and I started to dosome m and a's.
I acquired different publishing houses,integrated them into what has become Niv Group.
And I started to do some angel investing.
And while I'm doing that, I came across thisupcoming technology back in the day.
It was two years before Chet GPT released.
And I kind of realized that a revolution iscoming.
(03:05):
It will disrupt every industry, publishingincluded, and I better do something about it.
Either I will become irrelevant by it or Icould be the one who lead this opportunity in
the world.
So of course, I decided to be the pioneer.
I started another company named Spines.
Back then we have a different name, but weupdate that to Spines.
(03:26):
And I started with my own capital.
I realized it will be very, very easy todevelop that technology.
Soon I realized my capital will never beenough.
So we raised at the beginning from angelinvestors and then we had a seed round led by
Alef.
It's a top tier VC focused on early stagecompanies in Israel.
(03:50):
The partner in Aleph who led around is MichaelEisenberg and he Ah,
makes it easier.
And he published few books before that.
So one of the first question I asked him is,how was your publishing process?
And he told me terrible.
And I'm like, he get us, he know what we aredoing.
And it was a $6,500,000 seed round.
(04:13):
Launched the product early twenty three.
Grew in revenue about a % in that year.
That's what led us to the seed round.
And after that, throughout '24, we kept thatsame growth rate and we had a series A, dollars
60,000,000 series A led by Orn Zehve.
(04:35):
He's one of the top tier investors in theValley.
And for me, it's a huge opportunity to workwith him.
So we've been growing very, very fast, but nowI will explain what we're actually doing.
In the American publishing industry, there areabout 2,500,000 titles published annually,
(04:59):
Okay?
However, only 50,000 of them are published thetraditionally way.
That means that a publisher invests his owntime and money and capital inside the book and
he is looking to making revenue from sellingcopies of that same book.
And most of the authors will never had thatwill never have this opportunity, okay, because
(05:23):
they are first time authors, they are notfamous, no one are waiting for their next book,
okay?
So their only chance to getting their bookpublished is they have to invest time and money
in the process.
That will cost them somewhere between 10,000 to$50,000 to get their manuscript published as a
book.
Either they will go to a self publishingprocess, that means they now have to figure out
(05:47):
publishing, which is a super complex task,okay?
Or they will go to a vanity publisher and ithas its own advantages and disadvantages.
So now, finally, authors have a differentalternative, that's spines.
So with spines, we are not a publishing house,we are not a self publishing service, we are a
(06:10):
publishing platform.
That's a new concept.
So what we do, we allows anyone to upload theirmanuscript.
Our tools can help them do the formatting, theproofreading, the cover design.
We can scan the book, understand what it'sabout, start to suggest categories.
You know, there are so many categories tochoose from, you have to choose that very
(06:32):
wisely.
Then we optimize the metadata.
That's what will determine the visibility ofthe book in the different channels.
We can create not only ebook and print ondemand versions of the book, we can also create
an audiobook version of the book using Nokidding.
Yes.
Using our own 60 synthetic voices or we can usethe author's own voice.
(06:55):
Okay?
And instead of him going forty hours into hisstudio, we only need three minutes of his
voice.
We can create a model of his voice and generatethe whole audiobook with his own voice.
And, then we can list the books across 100distribution channels worldwide, not only on
Amazon.
Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Book aMillion, the book is listed everywhere.
(07:16):
And then Spice actually become the royaltymanagement system.
We can manage the royalty for them and can helpthem market their book as well on the different
channels.
So for me, Spice is a three sixty degreesolutions, A to Z solution for authors from the
day they finished writing the manuscript untilthe book is published, distributed and
(07:40):
marketed.
So by the way, there is a huge misconceptionwhen we announced our $16,000,000 Series A.
People told that when I said that we're aboutto publish 8,000 new titles in 2025, people
thought
that we
are generating the content with AI.
All the books we published are a % written byhuman beings.
(08:02):
We just lowered the barrier of them to become apublished authors, instead of them going to a
six to eighteen months of a process andinvesting tens of thousands of dollars in the
process, with Spice, it's only two to threeweeks.
You probably have a lot of idea of what I'mtalking about, right?
I'm sitting here and I'm busting and I'mthinking, know, not to interrupt you, but I'm
(08:25):
thinking, where were you twelve to eighteenmonths ago?
Because everything you're saying, and I didn'twrite it.
I had someone help me, but then they did theother stuff and I'm thinking, oh my God,
because I wish I had a little more control andunderstanding of the other stuff prior.
Yes.
Right?
So Wow.
Anyway, continue.
(08:46):
Sorry, just
I'm doing, everything comes from my ownexperience, both as published author, both as a
publisher, okay?
Like, I met in one on one meetings with over8,000 authors throughout my careers and they
all had the same complaint.
Why didn't the cover designer read my book?
Because he can't.
(09:07):
He have to design covers.
Okay?
So so with AI, we actually solve that becausewe scan the book, we understand what it's about
and we can start generate covers based on thebook, based on how how covers looks on those
specific categories.
So it's a category oriented cover design.
So we have so many solutions that we developedand everything come from me understanding what
(09:34):
authors actually need.
And so my mission with Splines is, you know, inIsrael I publish 1,200 titles a year and I was
wondering, will I ever be able to publish amillion titles in my life in my lifetime?
And I realized that that in the old way, I willnever be able.
(09:57):
Okay?
But with with the new era of publishing, withthe power of AI, I will probably will be able
to do so.
So that's fine.
That's my way of helping not only the Israeliauthors, but the whole world getting their book
published.
I believe, by the way, that the only reason weknow what happened on planet earth thousands of
(10:20):
years ago is because people published book.
And in the future, we might think that thedigital media will last forever, but it
probably won't, okay?
All the servers of Amazon need electricity.
Who knows if it will be here in thousand years?
(10:42):
But books that were printed, someone will findthem.
Okay?
Someone will read them and and and book bookscan stand the test of time.
And for me, that's the mission, to help as muchpeople as possible to get the book to get their
book published, to make sure we can extend thehuman consciousness into the future as long as
(11:05):
possible.
All I can say is, wow, usually don't have aproblem not talking.
Now I'm sitting here, my head is on overloadwith all the things.
First of all, you just said electricity andeverything.
I'm thinking right away, oh my God, in anactual catastrophe when we're all stranded and
we're stuck somewhere and you don't, can'tcharge your phone or your Kindle, you can't
(11:29):
read.
The book could keep you sane.
Even if you read the same book six times, youhave something in your hand.
Yes.
I think the Kindle was a great idea, greatinvention.
But you know, as I said before, I have aKindle, I don't really use it, but when I was
using it, if I fall asleep, reading the Kindle,I get a bruise in the morning.
I fall asleep with the paperback book, it justfalls lightly on my chest and it's nice, right?
(11:53):
But
But it's, I think about, I just did a book, putit, it was printed November, started, just in
case everyone could see it, it was startedabout eighteen months ago, twelve months ago.
I worked with someone with the writing, theydid the format.
I didn't do anything, which is what you see alot of today for people who wanna put out books
(12:16):
that don't know anything about books, you go tosomebody.
And it was a long process.
And even at the end, the person who wrote it,they did an okay job, but maybe after you see
it in the end, you start to think of all theseother things that you could change and how you
would do it.
And then I'm thinking, wow, like even on my endusing AI to get the book going, I said to the
(12:40):
writer, I'm the author, he's the writer.
I said, do you see AI affecting what you do?
And at first he said, yeah, well, you know, andI said, no.
I said, you got it, you're looking at it allwrong.
I said, I look at it this way.
AI could only make your life easier in thesense that if someone like me might sit down
(13:01):
and do the creation of the thoughts in AI toget the feel, the flow, the going, you'll then
take it and then, you know, craft it perhapsusing Spine.
But my friend said to me after, you're a dummy,why didn't you use AI and create the book
yourself and save that money?
And I said to him, I'm a dummy.
(13:21):
I said, you're a bigger dummy.
I said, Because what do I know about writing abook?
How do I know it's a good book?
I have no experience.
You still, no matter what you're doing, evenwith AI, you need to know what you're doing.
I know, yes.
Right?
To know if it's good.
So to the author, I said, you're not gonna loseyour job.
I said, people are gonna make your job easierand you might have to, you know, do a little
more proofreading, but you're gonna get paid inthe end and it's good, you know?
(13:46):
And then like you mentioned the cover, thecover, I had to go to my brother and a
photographer and they sat down and they figuredout, and that was another step.
And we see with AI today, how it speeds it up.
So I'm just sitting here just going, wow.
Are you Oh my God, so many questions.
So, but are you now Are you outside of Israelnow using it?
(14:10):
Are people using it?
Are you promoting it?
How are you So
Spice is focused only on American authors.
We operate in The States.
To date, we published 2,500 authors andeveryone are Americans.
(14:31):
And all the books we published written byAmericans published in The US.
We do offer different languages now.
So what we can do, we can use the power of AIto translate books from different languages to
English or from English to different languages.
And that will allow our authors aninternational opportunity.
(14:52):
So let's say you already published your book inThe US and now you want to publish it again in
four or five new languages, you can do it withSpines.
Same as, let's say you publish your book inSpanish for Latin America now you introduce
your book into The US market, you can translateit to English with Spines and we will publish
(15:13):
it in The US.
So by the way, the translation is not 100% pureAI.
It's a hybrid solution, Okay, because theaccuracy is not there yet.
What we are saying is AI for speed, human forquality.
So it's a together
process.
By the way, I love it.
(15:34):
Yes.
So we have that in place right now.
So so we do offer that to Israeli authors bythe way, if they want to, let's say they
publish the book in Hebrew and now they want topublish But
they don't know English.
English.
Right.
Now they can use Spines to do that, okay?
(15:54):
So mainly on the American market right now.
That's where the money is right now, right?
There any publishing houses who come to you?
So so I've been reached out a lot by so manypublishers.
When when I just started this company, I I hadthis this this decision to make.
(16:18):
Either we will go direct to consumers, we willwork directly with the authors, or we will
offer that technology to publishers.
But back in the day, before everyone talk aboutAI, when I try to explain publisher what we're
actually doing, they all believe that I'm acrazy guy and and and it will never work.
So and now we are so so deep into being a adirect to Opera's company, just just I I I I
(16:45):
tried to see if we can change our roadmap alittle bit to offer publishers a way in our
technology.
But we just recently decided to keep focus onthe authors, keep giving them value, really.
And maybe maybe maybe by the end of next yearwe will allow publishers into using our
(17:09):
technology and platform as well.
So that's the It's a decision I made a fewyears ago, I have to keep going that path.
Now, is there anyone out there with somethinglike this?
(17:31):
So I heard about a new company that just hadsyndrome, and they didn't launch yet, so I
don't know what they're actually working on.
But right now, an AI based publishing platformthat take cares of production, distribution and
marketing, Spines it's the only one that'savailable.
But I'm pretty sure soon there will be moresolutions, then things will start being more
(17:57):
interesting.
Yeah.
Well, listen, there there there always is moreto come, right?
Because that's competition.
But for those that are out early, for thosethat are out doing it right, for those that are
out gathering the right data and you know, theegos aren't too big, have a good running start
to be the head of the industry in that area.
(18:20):
Yes.
Right?
It's like, and so how do you, I'm gonna so howdo you find your authors?
How do they find you?
So we're building a a very strong community ofauthors.
But when we just started, we focused on the onthe highest intent, anyone who looked on
Google, how to publish a book.
That's my customer, you know.
(18:41):
So and and and and now we're expanding thatmore.
Our our mission for '25 is to build a verystrong brand awareness, okay, because still
spines like you didn't heard about us before,so so Spice, it's it's not that a strong brand
name yet.
(19:02):
I'm I'm my plans for this year is is to do alot of brand building activities to make sure
that people actually hear about us, the rightpeople hear about us, and trying our product,
and and realizing how much our solution isamazing and can help them get their book
published easily, fast.
(19:24):
That's the yeah.
Are you have you are you have you?
Will you speak to printing companies?
So right now what we do, we actually When weare creating the files of the book for the
distribution, we're creating about 70 differentversions of the same book.
Why?
Because each channel requires different sizing,different formats.
(19:48):
And and we'll list the books across all thechannels and every time the the let's say let's
say a reader want to buy a book of spines onAmazon, so a third party printer of Amazon
print it and ship it to him.
So that's the way we are working now withprinted houses.
(20:09):
And also we have the option for print on demandcopies.
Let's say the author wants, I don't know, 5,100copies shipped to his home for him to resell or
give away.
So we have that option and we actually printthat with a different partner which can give us
and our authors a better offer.
(20:29):
So we actually take care of everything for theauthors.
Do you have your vendors already for that?
I, you know, and I just know a lot of people ina lot of countries.
So if you ever need, I'm happy to help connectyou with the right print company that
understands what you're doing and the endresult, because every print company has As long
as they have everything.
(20:50):
A good API, can work with them.
Right.
Yeah.
No.
Anyway, we'll talk about that one after.
How many people on the team?
We just passed the 100 team members mark.
It was very exciting.
And and and we will probably finish 2025 withabout 130.
(21:11):
The we are growing.
That's what's important.
Oh no, for sure.
And on the team, so when I was on the websiteand I look at the main team, how did everybody
come together, your core group?
So
(21:32):
most of the managers in Spine started with meat Neve Publishing.
So a few of them are working with me very veryclose for over a decade.
Just for for example, Neve of that.
By the way, his first name is my last name andthat's a Yeah.
Again.
So so and he was the first CEO in NivPublishing.
(21:54):
Like he so like after me.
So he was the first one that I actually feltcomfortable to to to let him manage my baby,
okay?
So so Right.
Now he's the COO of of Spines.
So having the same team members who alreadyhelped me build a successful company before and
(22:16):
now we're building a new comp we're buildingSpines.
So so it's For me, it's a very much more easierof a journey because I actually took the talent
from Nuv publishing, imported them into Spines,and now life are easier.
So
(22:37):
And is everything under one umbrella now?
Or like do you have offices in differentcompanies spread out?
So Spice, we are separated.
We have team in Israel, We have team inFlorida.
We have team in Eastern Europe and we have teamteam in Latin America.
And that's very hard by the way for me, all theall the different time zones.
(23:02):
I need to be awake.
Oh, actually, you what?
It's funny.
You mentioned times you mentioned time zonesand we're talking AI.
So, you know, AI came out two years ago.
It was been around a long time, but it came outtwo years ago.
So the average human being is learning about itand playing with it and now finding all the
different benefits of it, which is good becauseit'll open everybody up to the possibilities of
(23:25):
what it could do.
And then you could build some trust within it.
But I remember recently something I justlearned on AI was I was trying to coordinate
three people to be on the podcast fromdifferent places in the world.
They all sent me their local times and what wasgood for them.
And I'm like, oh my God, I gotta take an Excelsheet.
I'm gonna list them all.
(23:46):
I'm gonna have to figure out daylight savings.
I don't wanna mess up and blah, blah.
And then I said, no.
And I copy paste it all into chat.
And then I just prompted it to give me thecommon times, the common dates in my time.
And literally like in four seconds, it spit outwhat everyone's time was the same.
And then I just flipped it to say, Hey, couldyou make me an email for inviting for one time?
(24:08):
And then it did that.
And then I said, Could you make the emailshorter?
These people don't read.
And then it gave me like a two sentence thingand sent it out and everyone within forty eight
hours.
Amazing.
It might've taken me two days just to make suremy times in Excel were right.
Amazing.
Right?
Because you do that.
Like, what is happening nowadays is is whathappened thousand two hundred years ago with
(24:31):
the industrial revolution.
Because, like, you can bring out the strongestperson, you cannot lift the things that
machines can lift.
Same thing with complex tasks.
So the clever person will probably soon willnot be able to compete with AI.
(24:54):
And those kinds of tasks, everything will besolved soon with AI and we just need to adapt
ourselves because this is what happening and weare are living through that revolution.
(25:14):
And if and the ones who wouldn't adopters,adopt themselves will probably be be
irrelevant, okay?
We need
stay not gonna lose your job to AI, you'regonna lose your job to someone who knows AI
better than you.
Exactly.
Right?
Exactly.
Because even when the computers came out, theysaid everyone's gonna lose their jobs.
(25:36):
We have more computers now than we ever had andsomeone has to manage them.
Yes.
Right?
It's, no, I think AI in our world, you know,will speed things up, will make us learn
quicker.
The only thing I gotta remind everybody withthe AI in the chat is you must read what you're
(25:56):
doing.
You must read it before you copy and paste.
Of course.
You copy and paste.
So just quickly, because we're, we're, we'relaughing, right?
So I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn and I do a bunch ofposting and I post one thing and there's
another fella who's coming at me, right?
Like he's wants to fight me and he puts outthis thing trying to whatever, make me see
(26:19):
something a different way or point out stuff.
I always say to myself, you gotta relax onlineand watch what you say, because once you write
it, it's not erasable.
And even though it's usually an emotion in themoment, right?
So he writes what he writes and the steam iscoming out of my ears because I'm really hot on
the topic and it happens to be an Israel topic.
(26:41):
And I started doing this and I had a wholething and I, oh, no, you can't do that.
What did I end up writing?
I wrote, if you're gonna use chat GPT, makesure you read it and put your name in where the
paragraphs are, where the brackets, because hedid a copy and paste and never changed the
name.
It's, everybody's gotta learn something alongthe way.
(27:05):
Sometimes you learn the easy way, sometimes youlearn the long way.
So I'm a author now, I go and I rewrite, Iwrite another book, which I gotta start
thinking about now because I wanna use yourservice.
And the audio book idea, I'm sitting here blewme away.
(27:25):
So actually, okay, so my first thought is, I'mthe author, I'm writing a book, I come to you,
I go online.
I didn't look at pricing or anything, but howmuch around does it start or give me an idea on
pricing?
And then how long from the time I upload thebook to I'm happy with the cover, it's laid out
and it's ready to
(27:46):
go for distribution?
Amazing.
So the way our model works is we have a fewdifferent life cycles of a book.
So the first one is the production plan, whichthat whatever your book will need to be
published.
Proofreading, formatting, cover design, audiobooks, e book, print on demand book.
(28:07):
Okay?
And that's on the production plan.
It starts from 1,200 up to 5,000.
That depends of how much of a value you wouldlike from the process.
After it's done, probably it takes about threeweeks to finalize everything.
So the cover is done, the proofreading, theformatting, everything is done.
That's it?
Three weeks.
(28:28):
As long as you are working with the same rhythmwith us.
Okay?
So Yes.
You have to approve everything.
So if you never choose a cover, the book willnever be
No.
That's some right.
But you're putting it out quick and it's on theauthor's.
Yes.
The author's not waiting for you is the point.
Yes.
And after everything is completed, now there isthe membership plan, which the actually the
(28:52):
distribution in the royalty management tool,okay?
So that's also depends of how vast you like thedistribution to be.
Start from 19 a month up to 49 a month, fewdifferent options there as well.
And so then we list the book across all thechannels, 100 different channels and you start
receiving royalty reports.
(29:15):
And also you do not have to figure out how tocollect your money from each different
platform.
We do everything for you.
You have everything in one centralized place.
You only have to do the w nine file once withus and that's it.
And I'm Canadian, don't gotta do that.
Okay, amazing.
(29:36):
And also you're getting access to the marketingtools.
So let's say you like to create an AMS campaignfor your book, you know, their system, it's a
rocket science.
Most of the authors will probably go to anagency, they would have to pay a retainer, on
top of the return there will be a budget.
After three months, maybe something will bedone.
So with our platform, can choose a monthlybudget.
(29:59):
We have a fee from that and we manage themarketing budget for you on all the channels
you would like us to do so.
So so it's also a tool for you to market thebooks and and and our tools can actually
generate the content, the banners, suggest anaudience, like take care of everything.
So so so that's
how Speechless.
(30:23):
Took me a while to develop all of that, okay?
So so so and and and by the way, like theoptions of the author to create is on voice.
That's that's a new release.
Like we only released that a month ago.
Okay?
But we are we are all we are always improving,always always releasing more features to make
(30:50):
our value to the authors higher and the best aspossible.
I'm spinning again because I'm thinking of mybook.
So I'm gonna, I just thought of this now.
So I'm gonna run through my experience with mybook.
(31:11):
And then, and this is the first time I've everdone anything like, I could barely read, let
alone write a book, right?
So for everyone listening, you know, I dovideo, but I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna tell
you what I went through.
And by the way, the person I was working with,he was awesome.
I would recommend him.
He was amazing.
In case he watches this, I don't want him tothink in any way that I'm trying to bang him
(31:34):
out.
I am not.
I'm just trying to get a handle on what'sreally happening and how things are happening
in the world and how fast they're movingbecause, you know, I will tell you personally
when the AI thing started, I was a little like,yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, like
computers, computers.
And then like within a few months, I'm like,now I'm a founding member of Imagine AI
(31:54):
conference, which actually is taking place inMay in Las Vegas for anyone listening.
So become, now I'm like in, I'm engulfed in it.
Like I'm just, you know, it's around.
So I go and I know nothing and I have an ideathat I wanna do a book.
I go to an author or a, or yeah, call commonauthor service.
(32:16):
And we sit down and we spend maybe sixteenweeks doing the book.
Every week he's asking me questions, puts ittogether, then did it.
And I'm reading every chapter every week toapprove, but what do I know because the book's
not there, I'm just reading the chapters.
Then you get more chapters, then you gotta goback and readjust the other chapters for a flow
and to see where it goes.
(32:36):
And again, what do I know about any of this?
And then we keep going, we keep going, the bookgets done, then I see it.
Once it's written, I look at it, I read it,even the font, I was like, I wasn't crazy about
the font, change this, change that, anotherround, another round.
We do that then for the cover, I say, okay,what about the cover?
(32:56):
I don't do covers.
Oh no, you don't do covers.
Now I got another job within this job, right?
So I reach out to my brother who's a designerand my friend, my fishing buddy and
photographer and we sit down and I go over andI said, okay, he goes, what do you wanna do
with the cover?
I go, what are you asking me for?
I don't know what I wanna do with the cover.
You're the photographer, you're the designer,you talk, tell me what to do.
(33:18):
Because, and I'm talking from the perspectiveof, really don't do this.
I don't know it, right?
So I just learn.
Then I give the cover, then the person wasgonna take care of the printing for me and it
was another country and then I said to him, no,I've got it printed in North America because
it's just not good for me to be promoting printfrom another country, I'm here.
(33:42):
And to be fair, I said to him, tell me how muchmoney you would have made on the print because
I'm gonna pay you the profit you would havemade on the print because I'm not taking it
away from you, but I can't not do it where Iam.
So I did that and then he handled the Amazonfor me the Barnes and Noble, although Barnes
and Noble isn't really anything, it's moreAmazon today.
(34:04):
So from where he is to what he's doing, now I'mhandling, he's handling it, but it's done,
excuse me, in his country and his currency.
And then he goes to pay me the royalty, butthere's a whole back cause of tax and that
like, and I'm thinking I didn't do my homework.
And no offense to him, I didn't do my homework.
I should be, I should have known all of this.
(34:24):
And I said to him, you should have an office,you know, in North America doing it here
because why am I paying, holding, whatever.
And then, so here I am, then I find spines andthen I hear everything that you're doing.
And with him, there's no conversation of audiobook because that's not what he's set up to do.
My book is listed on Amazon in 12 or 13countries in English.
(34:49):
Okay.
No, but in English.
English, yes.
Right?
In Brazil, nobody's buying my book.
Although I get to advertise I'm in Brazil andmaybe I could take a trip and write it off, but
anyways, I don't have access.
And then I'm sitting here and I'm listeningand, you know, for everybody listening, you
(35:09):
always have work to do.
If you think you're not gonna have anything todo and you're gonna push a button and it's just
gonna be there and ready, No.
And I'm sure you're gonna have a lot ofdeadlines that you're gonna have to do because
their system or anybody's system not gonnafinish without you pressing I approve, right?
And that's even when, even in my, even when Iwas running a printing company, waiting for
people was also a problem then.
(35:30):
Yeah.
By the way, like, my dream that I'm working on,which will probably take few few more years to
develop, is is one click publishing.
That's like what I'm trying to create.
But we are still far away from that.
What Well, yeah.
You have to have a vision.
You have to have a vision and a destination.
Right?
Yes.
(35:51):
So but but what you've just did what you justdescribed, it's it's the common process that
authors are going through.
And you actually add a quicker one and morefocused one because people get lost with their
manuscript.
It takes them some sometimes year and a halfand they have no clue what they are doing and
(36:13):
there's so much misinformation.
Like when you go to all the Reddit groups andthe Facebook, you see like so much
misinformation and a lot of experts thateveryone tell other stuff.
So what we are trying to create with Spine isbecause you finish writing your manuscript with
the guy who helped you, okay?
(36:34):
We are getting right after that, okay?
And from that to actually books that are beingpublished, there is a whole process.
You don't want the process, you want the endresult, Okay?
So what I'm trying to do is to simplify theprocess to make it shorter, easier, cheaper,
affordable.
(36:55):
You wouldn't have to go and explore the web andunderstand what's publishing is all about.
You just need to upload your manuscript afterit's done and we take care of everything.
That's my vision.
That's what I'm creating.
So that's what Spanish is all about, tosimplify the publishing journey.
Oh, I think it's great.
I mean, my first time, I mean, I don't know ifI'm gonna do another book, although I did,
(37:18):
although 400 of these books did sell, which I'mkind of thinking, where is everybody?
Because I didn't get enough reviews on Amazon,but I thought that was pretty cool.
And actually get some pictures and emails frompeople, which is kind of heartwarming because
to know, and I hope it's just not sitting nextto their bed and they actually read it.
Anyway, book you actually need to sell twice.
Once for them to buy it, second for them toactually read it, you know?
(37:41):
Right, exactly.
So, but I'm sitting, when this one came out andI go through the book, all of a sudden I'm
thinking, oh my God, I forgot that.
I forgot that.
I forgot that.
I should do that.
I could do that.
I'm talking to somebody yesterday and he'slike, you know, buddy, he goes, all that should
be in your next book.
These are just people I'm talking to.
Now I'm sitting talking to him, I'm talking toyou and I'm thinking this task may have just
(38:04):
got easier, even if I wanted to sit down withchat, write my own 144 page book, because all
books are generally for self publishingsmaller.
I double space, I didn't have to use manywords.
And what a great way for a fun project to dothat.
And then I could either find a writer author toassist in the look or come right on there.
(38:31):
And you know, as you go through everything.
And then I haven't even touched the marketingthing and the distribution.
Yes.
So, you know, just the time that I spendputting it online, doing a little video,
putting it here, talking there, a post, afollow-up.
(38:52):
Yes.
It all becomes very, everything's very quicktoday, but everything's very time consuming
because there's so many things you wanna do.
Yes.
And by the way, the marketing starts way beforethe marketing starts.
Like, how the cover look, which are the bestcategories for your book, the description of
the text, that's the most important text of thebook, like this actual description of that.
(39:15):
And the keywords and the metadata optimization,which is how to work with the channel algorithm
to actually make sure people see the bookbecause there are so many books being listed
every day.
So you have to find a way to to jump to the topof the list.
So all of that is is happening before themarketing even starts, know.
(39:37):
That's in the production phase, but it'smarketing oriented.
This is like the
So question on the marketing, when, you know,like when you do your websites and you're
writing them and you're putting, you know, theSEO and the coding and all that stuff in there,
and and with people that do the books or theymarket them, how many people actually know what
(39:58):
they're doing when it comes to that?
Because it's all relatively new.
There's a lot of old school people workingwithin it.
Is it a big problem?
What, like, do people come to you after andsay, can you change things or add things or
what we can all we can always do do do arevision of the book and release it again.
(40:24):
Okay?
So that's something that we can do.
But what I realized that throughout my careerin publishing is that there are very good
publishers out there.
We have no idea how to optimize the metadata.
Okay?
Because and and and that's why
you Sorry.
I'm gonna cut you I'm gonna cut you off and I'mgonna I'm just gonna say this.
There's probably a whole lot that don't evenknow what the word metadata means.
(40:46):
Yeah.
Yes.
So maybe maybe just for the people listeningthat aren't in publishing, give us a breakdown,
a definition.
So it's an XML file with a lot of knowledgeabout the book, about 1,500 lines that somehow
the authors need to understand how to do thatby themselves.
(41:08):
Most of them has no clue.
So they go to Amazon expert who will do thatfor them.
So with our tools we can actually optimize thatwith AI and not only for Amazon, for each
platform there's different nuance that we canoptimize to make sure we gain the maximum
visibility on each channel.
(41:29):
So that's why I say the marketing of the bookstart way before the marketing starts, because
it start on the technical stuff that you needto know how to do.
Wow, writing is not just writing anymore, it'sbecome a science.
So what I'm trying to do is to make sure thewriters can write and we take care of
(41:50):
everything.
Yeah, I'm in awe.
And is there is there and you'll publish anybook, any kind of book?
Okay, so we do scan it, see if there'ssomething hatred about it, if it's hard to to,
I don't know, to spread hater or to create.
So you're not like Facebook who's removed allof the checks for all the bad stuff.
(42:11):
Right?
No.
But if we see that Amazon's, for some reason,banned the book, so so we unlisted from
everywhere.
Right.
We don't want to take part in anything that ishere to distribute bad stuff.
Agreed.
You know, in publishing a book, it's okay?
(42:33):
It's to breathe out, to bring out the light,okay?
So I'm here to share light, I'm not here toshare darkness.
So there are a lot of angry people who are whoare writing their I'm not here to give that a
hand.
Okay.
So so that's what we will not publish.
(42:53):
But I'm not here to determine who is worthy andwho isn't worthy to being an author.
Okay.
So as long as, let's say you spent over a yearwriting a manuscript, for me you are worthy to
get published.
There are those publishers who will tell youthat probably the book is premature, probably
it's not good enough.
(43:14):
That's not our way of doing publishing.
I believe that everyone is worthy and let'sgive the readers decide what is good and what
isn't,
you know?
Everybody has their own story.
One man's garbage is another man.
One, I can't say man.
One person's treasure is another person'sgarbage, right?
(43:35):
One person's bad story could be anotherperson's life story.
So we don't know.
And is there, in terms of, is there anyrestrictions on size of books, page count,
anything?
Is there We can take
care of everything.
We can create so many different.
We have the standard formats that we recommend.
(43:57):
Okay?
But we can take care of every every differentsize of book regarding Wow.
How boards it has, the size.
I don't know why.
I don't even I don't know why other publisherswouldn't come to you and just pay the monthly
fee on your website to have this done becauseit's the same thing.
(44:17):
Yes.
But but we will not give them the the files.
So they will have to do the distribution withus.
Well, what I'm saying is it's probably lessexpensive for them in the overall bigger
picture to come on and pay your regular retailrate and have it all managed.
(44:39):
Because I'm thinking when you sit down and youadd up all the people all the time and all the
phone calls that are required to make thingshappen.
So you could almost white label it in anotherwebsite just for them and it would still be
worth it.
Yes.
Right?
That's why we've been approached so much bypublishers.
And we figure out that now we will not focus onthat aspect of our product.
(45:03):
But maybe in later stages we will, becauseright now there are so many features we want to
develop for authors, okay?
And you maybe think that hundred people, it's alot, it's barely enough to create whatever we
are trying to create.
So everyone is working late long hours and weare trying to create as much value as possible.
(45:26):
So our roadmap is very, very tight.
But probably in later stages we will offermaybe a white label, maybe a publisher's Yeah,
you have to have a white label and even if youjust copy what you're doing now and white label
it, that's why I say for even the otherpublishers and printers and, you know, I mean,
(45:51):
I wanna talk about this.
I think this is amazing.
It's about, and even for the companies thatwould use it, could do other things within
their own company, right?
That's more focused maybe to what they do andhave this on the side.
And if you guys are, if they're working andyou're doing everything and anyone who's
listening, think about the real time and thereal hours you spend doing things.
(46:13):
I think too many of us, and I'll just say meincluded at times, you get caught up in the
actual dollar spend, but you don't look on theother side of what went into that.
And when you do, you realize, oh my God, had Idone it over there, that $5, I could have made
$50 with other ideas being creative, helpingother people.
(46:37):
Amazing.
It's not a rocket science.
It's really, and I think, guess people justcomplicate things because they get nervous,
they get worried and they get scared.
So now I have this book, I have my files.
Can I come to
you to do an audiobook?
Of course.
So so right now our we we still do not have adifferent package for audiobook only.
(47:01):
We are working on that.
Soon we will.
But for you, we can do that I can even like, ifyou could set by the way, we can even use that
podcast to to separate your voice and to createyour own voice model to generate your own
voice.
I'll do it with you, but I wasn't asking forme.
(47:21):
I was asking for people that are listening ifthey've already done a book somewhere.
So if someone's- Someone
would have those options, yes.
Okay, now if someone done a book somewhere,they have the files, can they come to you to do
the book in other languages and an audio book?
Yes,
yes, yes.
(47:43):
And if they have a space on Amazon already, areyou able to use that space?
Can you create another?
Or that's something we know about that yet, amI just coming up with new ideas?
No.
So just like the new versions of the book willbe listed on our Amazon store.
That's the way we are working.
Cool.
(48:03):
And you have like all the analytics for thesales and you I mean, you know, everybody uses
the word analytics.
It's the new inward.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
It's it.
I I can think of a few other words that comefrom that, but not the wrong right wrong place,
wrong time.
We have the old team dedicated to that.
So it's you know, eventually we are a datacompany.
(48:24):
Know, of course, we are
AI Everybody's a data company even if theydon't know it.
Yes.
Just realized that way before.
Yeah.
I mean, that is the new word.
That is the word of the century.
It doesn't matter if you're a printer, ifyou're selling socks all you want.
Listen, all everybody wants today is your emailaddress, your phone number.
(48:46):
Can I text you and could I email you?
Yes.
And then they go on to sell the list.
Yes.
Right?
For more, more, more stuff, but wow.
So I, I'm just sitting here, you know, it's notoften I come across something that just wows me
completely.
And I am just so wowed.
(49:06):
Thank you.
Particularly because I just had thisexperience.
And even when I went into it, I didn't think itwas so difficult.
It was challenging when I think back at the endto having to be, having to do, having to prove,
having to manage everything, even with who I'mdoing it with, it was even hard to understand
(49:28):
the whole Amazon process, right?
Every video you see online, there's alwaysevery expert telling you how they can make
money on Amazon.
Same company that tells you we'll do your SEOand within a month you'll be number one on
Google.
Doesn't work that way, right?
But I'm sitting and I'm just going, oh, oh my,oh my.
(49:49):
Wow.
I I I'm almost like We will never promise
any royalties.
Like like like, we cannot Get.
A a certain success with the book.
We can only make sure we are doing our best toimprove the book chances to succeed.
But if it will succeed it or not, it's behindour hands.
(50:09):
We do have the marketing tool that if you arewilling to pour marketing budget into that, it
might help.
But yet, it's it's There is a reason why only50,000 authors a year out of 2,500,000 books
being published are published traditionally.
There's a good reason why.
That's the odds, you know?
(50:32):
Well, have another 2,400,000 people to work
with, For me, it's amazing.
No, listen, even when I started this, you know,anyone who's getting into doing a book and if
you're gonna work with someone, you're in for,you know, 4 to $5,000 just for the sitting down
(50:54):
the back and forth.
And I keep holding it up to promote it, butyou're sitting down with them, the time it
takes, the doing, nothing's cheap.
And then even then after actually another cost,no one talked about, didn't think about after
we did the book and I read it, I gave it toanother proofreader that wasn't part of the
(51:17):
process, right?
Because what happens is, my own, I'll talk onlyfor myself, but if I don't see a mistake, I
will continue to not see that mistake.
I know.
Like, I is getting used to the same mistakes.
So if the same person read it again and againand again, eventually you will be
(51:38):
And my brain is too fast, right?
So it doesn't stop, it just keeps going.
It's not always the same mistakes.
So, you know, the old way of publishing, weused to have two different proofreaders, one
after another, doing the same proofreading tomake sure that no one missed any mistake.
(52:01):
And still, every book being published hasspelling mistakes in.
But with AI, we actually solve that because wescan the whole file and we find everything.
And you as an author can decide if you wouldlike to have this correction or not, but we
will find every grammar or spelling mistakes inthe book with our tool.
(52:22):
Listen, I remember, you know, we talk aboutmistakes.
I remember we used to produce annual reportsfor some big companies.
And there's a few times I remember back wherethe CEO of the company who has his picture in
his letter on the inside page, his name'sspelled wrong.
20 proofs, they've all seen it.
I wouldn't know, right?
(52:43):
But there's a If it's Michael, it was E Ainstead of A E.
It's
I'm very ashamed to say, but it's happened tome once in one of my books in New Publishing.
Like we misspelled the author's name andeveryone like went nuts.
Like how everyone missed that?
And it happens.
(53:03):
It happens.
But if you have right now, now you have theproper tools in place, those mistakes can never
happen.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Anyway, so I was just gonna finish.
So when I did when I gave out the proofing,there was another $1,500 that I did not budget
for the book, right?
So whatever my initial spend was, it just wentup.
(53:28):
And then, you know, anything else I did alongthe way that I didn't know, and I could tell
you, and you probably know and everyone else,when you do something the first time, you're as
good as dead.
Because, you know, when you, I remember when Ibought my, we bought a, I bought a 56 inches
big press for printing, and I remember, youknow, it ran thirteen, fourteen thousand sheets
an hour, and I get my first opportunity toprint a job on plastic, 500,000 sheets, and oh,
(53:52):
13,000 by the hours equals this, equals that.
I give the guy the price.
He says, okay, job's yours.
I just put the press in, 5,000,000, dollars 2hundred, a hundred feet long, whatever,
whatever.
We start running the job and then I realize,uh-oh, I don't know what I'm doing because I
didn't know about plastic.
Run the plastic, we finish the job, doesn'ttake three weeks, it takes six weeks.
(54:17):
We sit down and what did I learn?
I learned again the hard way that you need topractice, you need to speak with people.
The gentleman that I was doing it for was verykind in this learning mistake.
And he said to me, okay, you didn't run 13,000sheets, you ran 6,000 sheets, go back and re
cost the job now.
And I went, oh my God, this guy's amazing.
(54:38):
I go back, I re cost the job.
Instead of 85,000, it's 135,000.
And I'm thinking, what a sport, like great.
I sent him the quote, he calls me up, he says,listen, now your price is bang on.
Now take off $50 for the waste of plastic thatyou wasted learning how to print.
Right?
(54:59):
So same thing with the publishing or anythingelse.
Every time you make a change, the averageperson doesn't understand authors alterations.
It's not about the correction.
It's about the time the person's spending.
Yes.
Yes.
So, oh my, it's just It takes
as long as you are aligned with that, no matterwhat happened, you will fix and you will
(55:24):
optimize.
And you learn, you learn going forward.
Yes.
Right?
I remembered when I opened currently the oneand only print on demand factory in Israel.
We had a very, very long learning curve.
What's it called?
It's it's part of NIF publishing.
(55:45):
But it was very, very, very hard figureeverything out and we did lot of iteration
until we finally figure out how to publishprint on demand books.
It's not that an easy task.
You come from printing, so you probablyunderstand how complicated can it be.
(56:08):
Right, I understand it.
But the other thing is nothing's easy.
Even the easy stuff isn't easy until youactually know what you're doing.
And then by then you've already made so manymistakes that it is easy.
Yes.
But nothing's easy.
That's the
only way to learn.
In business, in fundraising, in startups, inrelationships, everything the hard way is well
(56:34):
learned, you know?
So just a little joke, you know, you wanna talkabout relationships and learning, you know,
like my first real long relationship andeverything, it was like, oh, you know what?
We don't need cards.
We don't need cards.
No Valentine's, none of those hallmark made upholidays, and you know, whatever, whatever.
And then the second time around, I realizedthat, oh, you should always buy a card on a
(56:55):
holiday.
It goes a lot farther than not.
And keep another one, just in case.
Just in case you forgot something.
Oh, well, no, gotta buy half a dozen, keep themin the drawer in case another time rolls
around.
The other thing is, you know, I realized evenwhen I was getting the books and I'm signing
(57:15):
books, you make mistakes.
So I've got 10 books where I gotta wait till Icome across people with that name, and then I'm
gonna write them a note.
Because you can't cross out, you know?
Wow, so I'm just like flabbergasted, like justwith the whole thing and just the potential for
(57:39):
ease and moving things along We're
We're gonna get better.
We will have so much that we are working onright now that whatever we have now in three,
four months, it will be much, much better.
Four months, I think in two weeks it'll bebetter.
(57:59):
In two weeks after it'll be better, right?
Cause it's all about, you know, just all aboutthe movement.
And as we go, we learn.
It's pretty, pretty cool.
I could probably think of like a hundred morethings, but I'm gonna hold off.
Why?
Because we're gonna do this again.
You have a company that I wanna follow.
(58:21):
I wanna, maybe just because I did the book andI'm now super intrigued and I don't come from a
big publishing background.
I'm in everything else, print, packaging, ondemand, whatever, but the book world is cool.
And even, you know, when we're doing the cover,my brother who's the designer, he made me go
with him to the bookstore so that we could walkaround and look at all the other books written
(58:45):
by individuals to see what it is.
And a lot of people don't have pictures, theyhave words or something.
And my brother's like, No, you're writing itabout you.
He says, You put you on the book.
Right?
And I'm like, I say, you're the designer, dowhat you want.
But it was, so the point is it was reallyimportant that I went with him to see, to know,
to begin to understand what else is out there.
(59:09):
Because you just don't wanna go on your own,but what a world to learn.
Yes.
Big, big, big.
And since the print on demand, I think the selfpublishing kind of just blew up because
everybody wants a book.
Yes.
And by the way, publish a book.
It's it's the easiest way to build yourpersonal brand because because in instant, you
(59:30):
become an expert.
Now you are an expert of that or that or that.
And if you're trying to build
That's why, honest to God, I didn't do thisbecause my whole life, my aspiration was to
print a book.
Right?
I did it because of the, you know, with thelittle consulting and wanting to speak and go
out, I put it together.
(59:51):
And then when I was putting it together, I'mlike, oh my God, that's pretty impressive.
Like I was impressed, you know?
And then my friends, they laughed.
Getting the recognition, you
actually published a book, which is very, verygood accomplishment to do because Exactly.
There are a lot of experts in lot of areas, butbut not all of them published a book.
(01:00:11):
And if you did, that's give you an advantage.
So that's gonna be your
It lets people know that you're into it.
It lets people know that you, you know, areinvesting in yourself for all the right
reasons.
So, no, very cool.
Very cool.
So yeah, we're definitely doing this again.
I'm definitely coming to Israel to take a tourof your facilities.
I know.
(01:00:32):
And hang I'm gonna hang hang out.
So
we can have a podcast here.
Oh, listen, I'll come there and set up, youknow, podcasts with some others and do them
from your place as well.
You're more than welcome.
You.
Anything to promote people.
The world needs more people promoting people,being happy, keeping things up there.
I say it all the time.
(01:00:52):
We're on this planet for a short time.
Let's make it a good time.
At the end of the day, you know, we all bleedred and we're all human.
And I like to keep it like that.
Before we close it down, do you have anythingfinal that you'd like to tell to the three
people that are listening out there?
And I joke all the time.
I'm hoping there's more than three.
(01:01:13):
But anything final?
Anything you wanna say?
I really enjoyed it.
And like my my my message is the same asalways.
If you have a book in you, don't save it fromthe world.
Let everyone give give your book a chance.
Who knows?
It's it's maybe in three thousand years,someone will read it and and and and it might
(01:01:38):
last for ages and books will probably outliveourselves.
So why not leave a mark on this planet?
Yeah, so one other benefit to that is it reallylooks good on your shelf or coffee table in
your own living room, right?
Of course.
Actually, funny thing before I get it down is Iwent to my friend's house and he was moving and
(01:01:59):
I helped him unpack and everything and we, youknow, kind of set up the place.
And I went into his room and that thing was setup and I just took my book and I put it on his
pillow.
Like, so when he went to bed at night, it waskind of sitting there and he just called me up
and he was just kind of cracking up.
Again, always trying to make a joke here andthere.
Yehuda, thank you so, so much.
This was so love to be educated.
(01:02:24):
Don't like to be schooled, I like to beeducated.
Bit of a difference.
Pleasure.
Everybody else, I really hope you enjoyed thispodcast.
I hope you enjoyed the topic.
If there's anything you wanna know, pleasereach out to me.
When I post it, I will include the website forspines.
(01:02:44):
If you know anyone who, anything interestingthat you wanna talk about, print anything, let
me know.
If you know anyone who wants to be on thepodcast, let me know.
I wanna promote print.
I wanna bring it to, I wanna bring print backto life and print is no longer dead.
Remember without print, the world does notfunction in any way.
Printing's alive, Warren Werbet, we'll see youon the next one.
(01:03:07):
Yehuda, thank you again, most appreciated.
Thank you.
Hey, everybody.
Wanna welcome you back to Printing's Alive, theonly podcast that's here to promote everything
print everywhere, any kind of print.
So just a reminder to everybody, if you if youlike the podcast, if you wanna be on it for a
good reason with print, tell me.
If you know someone that should be on it, letme know as well.
Alright.
Let's get into it today.
Today, I have another special guest.
(00:30):
I know I say that because I love print andeveryone I talk to, I think they're super
special.
This one is a little bit super special, super,super special to me, not only because of what
they do, but because of where they come from.
And you all know I have a soft spot for Israel.
And for, I don't know why, and I had it on thefirst podcast, but Israel seems to be a really
(00:50):
big place for technology and print.
And today I have Yehuda Niv from spines.com.
Welcome or shalom.
Shalom.
Thank you for hosting me.
Oh, it's
a pleasure to have you.
So I came across the website just because Ilike AI and everything, but Spines is the first
(01:13):
AI based company in publishing in the world todo what they do.
When I, I didn't tell you what they did yet,but when I came across it, I was like, oh man,
I gotta get them on here.
I want everyone to hear about this.
So Yehuda, tell me, I have so many questions.
I'm gonna bang off a couple questions first,because then I wanna let you roll with what it
(01:35):
is.
So like, first of all, how did you get into it?
What were you thinking?
And really, what is the purpose and what areyou doing with it?
And then I'll ask you some more after, butlet's roll.
So maybe I'll start from the early beginning,where about thirteen years ago, I I published
my first book, And it I was back thenthroughout my master degree at electronics
(02:00):
engineering.
And I realized that the publishing process isbroken.
So I decided to boost up my own publishingcompany named Niv Publishing.
I wasn't that clever about the name though, Nivis my last name.
And it started in my dorm room when I was astudent, but it's good to become the largest
publishing house in Israel.
(02:20):
In Niv Publishing, we publish over 1,200 titlesevery year.
Just for reference, the next competition inIsrael can publish about 300 titles a year.
So we are four times larger and quicker thaneveryone else here.
And about five years ago, I finishedstructuring the management team in NIV
publishing.
Finally, got my life back.
(02:41):
I could rest a little bit and I started to dosome m and a's.
I acquired different publishing houses,integrated them into what has become Niv Group.
And I started to do some angel investing.
And while I'm doing that, I came across thisupcoming technology back in the day.
It was two years before Chet GPT released.
And I kind of realized that a revolution iscoming.
(03:05):
It will disrupt every industry, publishingincluded, and I better do something about it.
Either I will become irrelevant by it or Icould be the one who lead this opportunity in
the world.
So of course, I decided to be the pioneer.
I started another company named Spines.
Back then we have a different name, but weupdate that to Spines.
(03:26):
And I started with my own capital.
I realized it will be very, very easy todevelop that technology.
Soon I realized my capital will never beenough.
So we raised at the beginning from angelinvestors and then we had a seed round led by
Alef.
It's a top tier VC focused on early stagecompanies in Israel.
(03:50):
The partner in Aleph who led around is MichaelEisenberg and he Ah,
makes it easier.
And he published few books before that.
So one of the first question I asked him is,how was your publishing process?
And he told me terrible.
And I'm like, he get us, he know what we aredoing.
And it was a $6,500,000 seed round.
(04:13):
Launched the product early twenty three.
Grew in revenue about a % in that year.
That's what led us to the seed round.
And after that, throughout '24, we kept thatsame growth rate and we had a series A, dollars
60,000,000 series A led by Orn Zehve.
(04:35):
He's one of the top tier investors in theValley.
And for me, it's a huge opportunity to workwith him.
So we've been growing very, very fast, but nowI will explain what we're actually doing.
In the American publishing industry, there areabout 2,500,000 titles published annually,
(04:59):
Okay?
However, only 50,000 of them are published thetraditionally way.
That means that a publisher invests his owntime and money and capital inside the book and
he is looking to making revenue from sellingcopies of that same book.
And most of the authors will never had thatwill never have this opportunity, okay, because
(05:23):
they are first time authors, they are notfamous, no one are waiting for their next book,
okay?
So their only chance to getting their bookpublished is they have to invest time and money
in the process.
That will cost them somewhere between 10,000 to$50,000 to get their manuscript published as a
book.
Either they will go to a self publishingprocess, that means they now have to figure out
(05:47):
publishing, which is a super complex task,okay?
Or they will go to a vanity publisher and ithas its own advantages and disadvantages.
So now, finally, authors have a differentalternative, that's spines.
So with spines, we are not a publishing house,we are not a self publishing service, we are a
(06:10):
publishing platform.
That's a new concept.
So what we do, we allows anyone to upload theirmanuscript.
Our tools can help them do the formatting, theproofreading, the cover design.
We can scan the book, understand what it'sabout, start to suggest categories.
You know, there are so many categories tochoose from, you have to choose that very
(06:32):
wisely.
Then we optimize the metadata.
That's what will determine the visibility ofthe book in the different channels.
We can create not only ebook and print ondemand versions of the book, we can also create
an audiobook version of the book using Nokidding.
Yes.
Using our own 60 synthetic voices or we can usethe author's own voice.
(06:55):
Okay?
And instead of him going forty hours into hisstudio, we only need three minutes of his
voice.
We can create a model of his voice and generatethe whole audiobook with his own voice.
And, then we can list the books across 100distribution channels worldwide, not only on
Amazon.
Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Book aMillion, the book is listed everywhere.
(07:16):
And then Spice actually become the royaltymanagement system.
We can manage the royalty for them and can helpthem market their book as well on the different
channels.
So for me, Spice is a three sixty degreesolutions, A to Z solution for authors from the
day they finished writing the manuscript untilthe book is published, distributed and
(07:40):
marketed.
So by the way, there is a huge misconceptionwhen we announced our $16,000,000 Series A.
People told that when I said that we're aboutto publish 8,000 new titles in 2025, people
thought
that we
are generating the content with AI.
All the books we published are a % written byhuman beings.
(08:02):
We just lowered the barrier of them to become apublished authors, instead of them going to a
six to eighteen months of a process andinvesting tens of thousands of dollars in the
process, with Spice, it's only two to threeweeks.
You probably have a lot of idea of what I'mtalking about, right?
I'm sitting here and I'm busting and I'mthinking, know, not to interrupt you, but I'm
(08:25):
thinking, where were you twelve to eighteenmonths ago?
Because everything you're saying, and I didn'twrite it.
I had someone help me, but then they did theother stuff and I'm thinking, oh my God,
because I wish I had a little more control andunderstanding of the other stuff prior.
Yes.
Right?
So Wow.
Anyway, continue.
(08:46):
Sorry, just
I'm doing, everything comes from my ownexperience, both as published author, both as a
publisher, okay?
Like, I met in one on one meetings with over8,000 authors throughout my careers and they
all had the same complaint.
Why didn't the cover designer read my book?
Because he can't.
(09:07):
He have to design covers.
Okay?
So so with AI, we actually solve that becausewe scan the book, we understand what it's about
and we can start generate covers based on thebook, based on how how covers looks on those
specific categories.
So it's a category oriented cover design.
So we have so many solutions that we developedand everything come from me understanding what
(09:34):
authors actually need.
And so my mission with Splines is, you know, inIsrael I publish 1,200 titles a year and I was
wondering, will I ever be able to publish amillion titles in my life in my lifetime?
And I realized that that in the old way, I willnever be able.
(09:57):
Okay?
But with with the new era of publishing, withthe power of AI, I will probably will be able
to do so.
So that's fine.
That's my way of helping not only the Israeliauthors, but the whole world getting their book
published.
I believe, by the way, that the only reason weknow what happened on planet earth thousands of
(10:20):
years ago is because people published book.
And in the future, we might think that thedigital media will last forever, but it
probably won't, okay?
All the servers of Amazon need electricity.
Who knows if it will be here in thousand years?
(10:42):
But books that were printed, someone will findthem.
Okay?
Someone will read them and and and book bookscan stand the test of time.
And for me, that's the mission, to help as muchpeople as possible to get the book to get their
book published, to make sure we can extend thehuman consciousness into the future as long as
(11:05):
possible.
All I can say is, wow, usually don't have aproblem not talking.
Now I'm sitting here, my head is on overloadwith all the things.
First of all, you just said electricity andeverything.
I'm thinking right away, oh my God, in anactual catastrophe when we're all stranded and
we're stuck somewhere and you don't, can'tcharge your phone or your Kindle, you can't
(11:29):
read.
The book could keep you sane.
Even if you read the same book six times, youhave something in your hand.
Yes.
I think the Kindle was a great idea, greatinvention.
But you know, as I said before, I have aKindle, I don't really use it, but when I was
using it, if I fall asleep, reading the Kindle,I get a bruise in the morning.
I fall asleep with the paperback book, it justfalls lightly on my chest and it's nice, right?
(11:53):
But
But it's, I think about, I just did a book, putit, it was printed November, started, just in
case everyone could see it, it was startedabout eighteen months ago, twelve months ago.
I worked with someone with the writing, theydid the format.
I didn't do anything, which is what you see alot of today for people who wanna put out books
(12:16):
that don't know anything about books, you go tosomebody.
And it was a long process.
And even at the end, the person who wrote it,they did an okay job, but maybe after you see
it in the end, you start to think of all theseother things that you could change and how you
would do it.
And then I'm thinking, wow, like even on my endusing AI to get the book going, I said to the
(12:40):
writer, I'm the author, he's the writer.
I said, do you see AI affecting what you do?
And at first he said, yeah, well, you know, andI said, no.
I said, you got it, you're looking at it allwrong.
I said, I look at it this way.
AI could only make your life easier in thesense that if someone like me might sit down
(13:01):
and do the creation of the thoughts in AI toget the feel, the flow, the going, you'll then
take it and then, you know, craft it perhapsusing Spine.
But my friend said to me after, you're a dummy,why didn't you use AI and create the book
yourself and save that money?
And I said to him, I'm a dummy.
(13:21):
I said, you're a bigger dummy.
I said, Because what do I know about writing abook?
How do I know it's a good book?
I have no experience.
You still, no matter what you're doing, evenwith AI, you need to know what you're doing.
I know, yes.
Right?
To know if it's good.
So to the author, I said, you're not gonna loseyour job.
I said, people are gonna make your job easierand you might have to, you know, do a little
more proofreading, but you're gonna get paid inthe end and it's good, you know?
(13:46):
And then like you mentioned the cover, thecover, I had to go to my brother and a
photographer and they sat down and they figuredout, and that was another step.
And we see with AI today, how it speeds it up.
So I'm just sitting here just going, wow.
Are you Oh my God, so many questions.
So, but are you now Are you outside of Israelnow using it?
(14:10):
Are people using it?
Are you promoting it?
How are you So
Spice is focused only on American authors.
We operate in The States.
To date, we published 2,500 authors andeveryone are Americans.
(14:31):
And all the books we published written byAmericans published in The US.
We do offer different languages now.
So what we can do, we can use the power of AIto translate books from different languages to
English or from English to different languages.
And that will allow our authors aninternational opportunity.
(14:52):
So let's say you already published your book inThe US and now you want to publish it again in
four or five new languages, you can do it withSpines.
Same as, let's say you publish your book inSpanish for Latin America now you introduce
your book into The US market, you can translateit to English with Spines and we will publish
(15:13):
it in The US.
So by the way, the translation is not 100% pureAI.
It's a hybrid solution, Okay, because theaccuracy is not there yet.
What we are saying is AI for speed, human forquality.
So it's a together
process.
By the way, I love it.
(15:34):
Yes.
So we have that in place right now.
So so we do offer that to Israeli authors bythe way, if they want to, let's say they
publish the book in Hebrew and now they want topublish But
they don't know English.
English.
Right.
Now they can use Spines to do that, okay?
(15:54):
So mainly on the American market right now.
That's where the money is right now, right?
There any publishing houses who come to you?
So so I've been reached out a lot by so manypublishers.
When when I just started this company, I I hadthis this this decision to make.
(16:18):
Either we will go direct to consumers, we willwork directly with the authors, or we will
offer that technology to publishers.
But back in the day, before everyone talk aboutAI, when I try to explain publisher what we're
actually doing, they all believe that I'm acrazy guy and and and it will never work.
So and now we are so so deep into being a adirect to Opera's company, just just I I I I
(16:45):
tried to see if we can change our roadmap alittle bit to offer publishers a way in our
technology.
But we just recently decided to keep focus onthe authors, keep giving them value, really.
And maybe maybe maybe by the end of next yearwe will allow publishers into using our
(17:09):
technology and platform as well.
So that's the It's a decision I made a fewyears ago, I have to keep going that path.
Now, is there anyone out there with somethinglike this?
(17:31):
So I heard about a new company that just hadsyndrome, and they didn't launch yet, so I
don't know what they're actually working on.
But right now, an AI based publishing platformthat take cares of production, distribution and
marketing, Spines it's the only one that'savailable.
But I'm pretty sure soon there will be moresolutions, then things will start being more
(17:57):
interesting.
Yeah.
Well, listen, there there there always is moreto come, right?
Because that's competition.
But for those that are out early, for thosethat are out doing it right, for those that are
out gathering the right data and you know, theegos aren't too big, have a good running start
to be the head of the industry in that area.
(18:20):
Yes.
Right?
It's like, and so how do you, I'm gonna so howdo you find your authors?
How do they find you?
So we're building a a very strong community ofauthors.
But when we just started, we focused on the onthe highest intent, anyone who looked on
Google, how to publish a book.
That's my customer, you know.
(18:41):
So and and and and now we're expanding thatmore.
Our our mission for '25 is to build a verystrong brand awareness, okay, because still
spines like you didn't heard about us before,so so Spice, it's it's not that a strong brand
name yet.
(19:02):
I'm I'm my plans for this year is is to do alot of brand building activities to make sure
that people actually hear about us, the rightpeople hear about us, and trying our product,
and and realizing how much our solution isamazing and can help them get their book
published easily, fast.
(19:24):
That's the yeah.
Are you have you are you have you?
Will you speak to printing companies?
So right now what we do, we actually When weare creating the files of the book for the
distribution, we're creating about 70 differentversions of the same book.
Why?
Because each channel requires different sizing,different formats.
(19:48):
And and we'll list the books across all thechannels and every time the the let's say let's
say a reader want to buy a book of spines onAmazon, so a third party printer of Amazon
print it and ship it to him.
So that's the way we are working now withprinted houses.
(20:09):
And also we have the option for print on demandcopies.
Let's say the author wants, I don't know, 5,100copies shipped to his home for him to resell or
give away.
So we have that option and we actually printthat with a different partner which can give us
and our authors a better offer.
(20:29):
So we actually take care of everything for theauthors.
Do you have your vendors already for that?
I, you know, and I just know a lot of people ina lot of countries.
So if you ever need, I'm happy to help connectyou with the right print company that
understands what you're doing and the endresult, because every print company has As long
as they have everything.
(20:50):
A good API, can work with them.
Right.
Yeah.
No.
Anyway, we'll talk about that one after.
How many people on the team?
We just passed the 100 team members mark.
It was very exciting.
And and and we will probably finish 2025 withabout 130.
(21:11):
The we are growing.
That's what's important.
Oh no, for sure.
And on the team, so when I was on the websiteand I look at the main team, how did everybody
come together, your core group?
So
(21:32):
most of the managers in Spine started with meat Neve Publishing.
So a few of them are working with me very veryclose for over a decade.
Just for for example, Neve of that.
By the way, his first name is my last name andthat's a Yeah.
Again.
So so and he was the first CEO in NivPublishing.
(21:54):
Like he so like after me.
So he was the first one that I actually feltcomfortable to to to let him manage my baby,
okay?
So so Right.
Now he's the COO of of Spines.
So having the same team members who alreadyhelped me build a successful company before and
(22:16):
now we're building a new comp we're buildingSpines.
So so it's For me, it's a very much more easierof a journey because I actually took the talent
from Nuv publishing, imported them into Spines,and now life are easier.
So
(22:37):
And is everything under one umbrella now?
Or like do you have offices in differentcompanies spread out?
So Spice, we are separated.
We have team in Israel, We have team inFlorida.
We have team in Eastern Europe and we have teamteam in Latin America.
And that's very hard by the way for me, all theall the different time zones.
(23:02):
I need to be awake.
Oh, actually, you what?
It's funny.
You mentioned times you mentioned time zonesand we're talking AI.
So, you know, AI came out two years ago.
It was been around a long time, but it came outtwo years ago.
So the average human being is learning about itand playing with it and now finding all the
different benefits of it, which is good becauseit'll open everybody up to the possibilities of
(23:25):
what it could do.
And then you could build some trust within it.
But I remember recently something I justlearned on AI was I was trying to coordinate
three people to be on the podcast fromdifferent places in the world.
They all sent me their local times and what wasgood for them.
And I'm like, oh my God, I gotta take an Excelsheet.
I'm gonna list them all.
(23:46):
I'm gonna have to figure out daylight savings.
I don't wanna mess up and blah, blah.
And then I said, no.
And I copy paste it all into chat.
And then I just prompted it to give me thecommon times, the common dates in my time.
And literally like in four seconds, it spit outwhat everyone's time was the same.
And then I just flipped it to say, Hey, couldyou make me an email for inviting for one time?
(24:08):
And then it did that.
And then I said, Could you make the emailshorter?
These people don't read.
And then it gave me like a two sentence thingand sent it out and everyone within forty eight
hours.
Amazing.
It might've taken me two days just to make suremy times in Excel were right.
Amazing.
Right?
Because you do that.
Like, what is happening nowadays is is whathappened thousand two hundred years ago with
(24:31):
the industrial revolution.
Because, like, you can bring out the strongestperson, you cannot lift the things that
machines can lift.
Same thing with complex tasks.
So the clever person will probably soon willnot be able to compete with AI.
(24:54):
And those kinds of tasks, everything will besolved soon with AI and we just need to adapt
ourselves because this is what happening and weare are living through that revolution.
(25:14):
And if and the ones who wouldn't adopters,adopt themselves will probably be be
irrelevant, okay?
We need
stay not gonna lose your job to AI, you'regonna lose your job to someone who knows AI
better than you.
Exactly.
Right?
Exactly.
Because even when the computers came out, theysaid everyone's gonna lose their jobs.
(25:36):
We have more computers now than we ever had andsomeone has to manage them.
Yes.
Right?
It's, no, I think AI in our world, you know,will speed things up, will make us learn
quicker.
The only thing I gotta remind everybody withthe AI in the chat is you must read what you're
(25:56):
doing.
You must read it before you copy and paste.
Of course.
You copy and paste.
So just quickly, because we're, we're, we'relaughing, right?
So I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn and I do a bunch ofposting and I post one thing and there's
another fella who's coming at me, right?
Like he's wants to fight me and he puts outthis thing trying to whatever, make me see
(26:19):
something a different way or point out stuff.
I always say to myself, you gotta relax onlineand watch what you say, because once you write
it, it's not erasable.
And even though it's usually an emotion in themoment, right?
So he writes what he writes and the steam iscoming out of my ears because I'm really hot on
the topic and it happens to be an Israel topic.
(26:41):
And I started doing this and I had a wholething and I, oh, no, you can't do that.
What did I end up writing?
I wrote, if you're gonna use chat GPT, makesure you read it and put your name in where the
paragraphs are, where the brackets, because hedid a copy and paste and never changed the
name.
It's, everybody's gotta learn something alongthe way.
(27:05):
Sometimes you learn the easy way, sometimes youlearn the long way.
So I'm a author now, I go and I rewrite, Iwrite another book, which I gotta start
thinking about now because I wanna use yourservice.
And the audio book idea, I'm sitting here blewme away.
(27:25):
So actually, okay, so my first thought is, I'mthe author, I'm writing a book, I come to you,
I go online.
I didn't look at pricing or anything, but howmuch around does it start or give me an idea on
pricing?
And then how long from the time I upload thebook to I'm happy with the cover, it's laid out
and it's ready to
(27:46):
go for distribution?
Amazing.
So the way our model works is we have a fewdifferent life cycles of a book.
So the first one is the production plan, whichthat whatever your book will need to be
published.
Proofreading, formatting, cover design, audiobooks, e book, print on demand book.
(28:07):
Okay?
And that's on the production plan.
It starts from 1,200 up to 5,000.
That depends of how much of a value you wouldlike from the process.
After it's done, probably it takes about threeweeks to finalize everything.
So the cover is done, the proofreading, theformatting, everything is done.
That's it?
Three weeks.
(28:28):
As long as you are working with the same rhythmwith us.
Okay?
So Yes.
You have to approve everything.
So if you never choose a cover, the book willnever be
No.
That's some right.
But you're putting it out quick and it's on theauthor's.
Yes.
The author's not waiting for you is the point.
Yes.
And after everything is completed, now there isthe membership plan, which the actually the
(28:52):
distribution in the royalty management tool,okay?
So that's also depends of how vast you like thedistribution to be.
Start from 19 a month up to 49 a month, fewdifferent options there as well.
And so then we list the book across all thechannels, 100 different channels and you start
receiving royalty reports.
(29:15):
And also you do not have to figure out how tocollect your money from each different
platform.
We do everything for you.
You have everything in one centralized place.
You only have to do the w nine file once withus and that's it.
And I'm Canadian, don't gotta do that.
Okay, amazing.
(29:36):
And also you're getting access to the marketingtools.
So let's say you like to create an AMS campaignfor your book, you know, their system, it's a
rocket science.
Most of the authors will probably go to anagency, they would have to pay a retainer, on
top of the return there will be a budget.
After three months, maybe something will bedone.
So with our platform, can choose a monthlybudget.
(29:59):
We have a fee from that and we manage themarketing budget for you on all the channels
you would like us to do so.
So so it's also a tool for you to market thebooks and and and our tools can actually
generate the content, the banners, suggest anaudience, like take care of everything.
So so so that's
how Speechless.
(30:23):
Took me a while to develop all of that, okay?
So so so and and and by the way, like theoptions of the author to create is on voice.
That's that's a new release.
Like we only released that a month ago.
Okay?
But we are we are all we are always improving,always always releasing more features to make
(30:50):
our value to the authors higher and the best aspossible.
I'm spinning again because I'm thinking of mybook.
So I'm gonna, I just thought of this now.
So I'm gonna run through my experience with mybook.
(31:11):
And then, and this is the first time I've everdone anything like, I could barely read, let
alone write a book, right?
So for everyone listening, you know, I dovideo, but I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna tell
you what I went through.
And by the way, the person I was working with,he was awesome.
I would recommend him.
He was amazing.
In case he watches this, I don't want him tothink in any way that I'm trying to bang him
(31:34):
out.
I am not.
I'm just trying to get a handle on what'sreally happening and how things are happening
in the world and how fast they're movingbecause, you know, I will tell you personally
when the AI thing started, I was a little like,yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, like
computers, computers.
And then like within a few months, I'm like,now I'm a founding member of Imagine AI
(31:54):
conference, which actually is taking place inMay in Las Vegas for anyone listening.
So become, now I'm like in, I'm engulfed in it.
Like I'm just, you know, it's around.
So I go and I know nothing and I have an ideathat I wanna do a book.
I go to an author or a, or yeah, call commonauthor service.
(32:16):
And we sit down and we spend maybe sixteenweeks doing the book.
Every week he's asking me questions, puts ittogether, then did it.
And I'm reading every chapter every week toapprove, but what do I know because the book's
not there, I'm just reading the chapters.
Then you get more chapters, then you gotta goback and readjust the other chapters for a flow
and to see where it goes.
(32:36):
And again, what do I know about any of this?
And then we keep going, we keep going, the bookgets done, then I see it.
Once it's written, I look at it, I read it,even the font, I was like, I wasn't crazy about
the font, change this, change that, anotherround, another round.
We do that then for the cover, I say, okay,what about the cover?
(32:56):
I don't do covers.
Oh no, you don't do covers.
Now I got another job within this job, right?
So I reach out to my brother who's a designerand my friend, my fishing buddy and
photographer and we sit down and I go over andI said, okay, he goes, what do you wanna do
with the cover?
I go, what are you asking me for?
I don't know what I wanna do with the cover.
You're the photographer, you're the designer,you talk, tell me what to do.
(33:18):
Because, and I'm talking from the perspectiveof, really don't do this.
I don't know it, right?
So I just learn.
Then I give the cover, then the person wasgonna take care of the printing for me and it
was another country and then I said to him, no,I've got it printed in North America because
it's just not good for me to be promoting printfrom another country, I'm here.
(33:42):
And to be fair, I said to him, tell me how muchmoney you would have made on the print because
I'm gonna pay you the profit you would havemade on the print because I'm not taking it
away from you, but I can't not do it where Iam.
So I did that and then he handled the Amazonfor me the Barnes and Noble, although Barnes
and Noble isn't really anything, it's moreAmazon today.
(34:04):
So from where he is to what he's doing, now I'mhandling, he's handling it, but it's done,
excuse me, in his country and his currency.
And then he goes to pay me the royalty, butthere's a whole back cause of tax and that
like, and I'm thinking I didn't do my homework.
And no offense to him, I didn't do my homework.
I should be, I should have known all of this.
(34:24):
And I said to him, you should have an office,you know, in North America doing it here
because why am I paying, holding, whatever.
And then, so here I am, then I find spines andthen I hear everything that you're doing.
And with him, there's no conversation of audiobook because that's not what he's set up to do.
My book is listed on Amazon in 12 or 13countries in English.
(34:49):
Okay.
No, but in English.
English, yes.
Right?
In Brazil, nobody's buying my book.
Although I get to advertise I'm in Brazil andmaybe I could take a trip and write it off, but
anyways, I don't have access.
And then I'm sitting here and I'm listeningand, you know, for everybody listening, you
(35:09):
always have work to do.
If you think you're not gonna have anything todo and you're gonna push a button and it's just
gonna be there and ready, No.
And I'm sure you're gonna have a lot ofdeadlines that you're gonna have to do because
their system or anybody's system not gonnafinish without you pressing I approve, right?
And that's even when, even in my, even when Iwas running a printing company, waiting for
people was also a problem then.
(35:30):
Yeah.
By the way, like, my dream that I'm working on,which will probably take few few more years to
develop, is is one click publishing.
That's like what I'm trying to create.
But we are still far away from that.
What Well, yeah.
You have to have a vision.
You have to have a vision and a destination.
Right?
Yes.
(35:51):
So but but what you've just did what you justdescribed, it's it's the common process that
authors are going through.
And you actually add a quicker one and morefocused one because people get lost with their
manuscript.
It takes them some sometimes year and a halfand they have no clue what they are doing and
(36:13):
there's so much misinformation.
Like when you go to all the Reddit groups andthe Facebook, you see like so much
misinformation and a lot of experts thateveryone tell other stuff.
So what we are trying to create with Spine isbecause you finish writing your manuscript with
the guy who helped you, okay?
(36:34):
We are getting right after that, okay?
And from that to actually books that are beingpublished, there is a whole process.
You don't want the process, you want the endresult, Okay?
So what I'm trying to do is to simplify theprocess to make it shorter, easier, cheaper,
affordable.
(36:55):
You wouldn't have to go and explore the web andunderstand what's publishing is all about.
You just need to upload your manuscript afterit's done and we take care of everything.
That's my vision.
That's what I'm creating.
So that's what Spanish is all about, tosimplify the publishing journey.
Oh, I think it's great.
I mean, my first time, I mean, I don't know ifI'm gonna do another book, although I did,
(37:18):
although 400 of these books did sell, which I'mkind of thinking, where is everybody?
Because I didn't get enough reviews on Amazon,but I thought that was pretty cool.
And actually get some pictures and emails frompeople, which is kind of heartwarming because
to know, and I hope it's just not sitting nextto their bed and they actually read it.
Anyway, book you actually need to sell twice.
Once for them to buy it, second for them toactually read it, you know?
(37:41):
Right, exactly.
So, but I'm sitting, when this one came out andI go through the book, all of a sudden I'm
thinking, oh my God, I forgot that.
I forgot that.
I forgot that.
I should do that.
I could do that.
I'm talking to somebody yesterday and he'slike, you know, buddy, he goes, all that should
be in your next book.
These are just people I'm talking to.
Now I'm sitting talking to him, I'm talking toyou and I'm thinking this task may have just
(38:04):
got easier, even if I wanted to sit down withchat, write my own 144 page book, because all
books are generally for self publishingsmaller.
I double space, I didn't have to use manywords.
And what a great way for a fun project to dothat.
And then I could either find a writer author toassist in the look or come right on there.
(38:31):
And you know, as you go through everything.
And then I haven't even touched the marketingthing and the distribution.
Yes.
So, you know, just the time that I spendputting it online, doing a little video,
putting it here, talking there, a post, afollow-up.
(38:52):
Yes.
It all becomes very, everything's very quicktoday, but everything's very time consuming
because there's so many things you wanna do.
Yes.
And by the way, the marketing starts way beforethe marketing starts.
Like, how the cover look, which are the bestcategories for your book, the description of
the text, that's the most important text of thebook, like this actual description of that.
(39:15):
And the keywords and the metadata optimization,which is how to work with the channel algorithm
to actually make sure people see the bookbecause there are so many books being listed
every day.
So you have to find a way to to jump to the topof the list.
So all of that is is happening before themarketing even starts, know.
(39:37):
That's in the production phase, but it'smarketing oriented.
This is like the
So question on the marketing, when, you know,like when you do your websites and you're
writing them and you're putting, you know, theSEO and the coding and all that stuff in there,
and and with people that do the books or theymarket them, how many people actually know what
(39:58):
they're doing when it comes to that?
Because it's all relatively new.
There's a lot of old school people workingwithin it.
Is it a big problem?
What, like, do people come to you after andsay, can you change things or add things or
what we can all we can always do do do arevision of the book and release it again.
(40:24):
Okay?
So that's something that we can do.
But what I realized that throughout my careerin publishing is that there are very good
publishers out there.
We have no idea how to optimize the metadata.
Okay?
Because and and and that's why
you Sorry.
I'm gonna cut you I'm gonna cut you off and I'mgonna I'm just gonna say this.
There's probably a whole lot that don't evenknow what the word metadata means.
(40:46):
Yeah.
Yes.
So maybe maybe just for the people listeningthat aren't in publishing, give us a breakdown,
a definition.
So it's an XML file with a lot of knowledgeabout the book, about 1,500 lines that somehow
the authors need to understand how to do thatby themselves.
(41:08):
Most of them has no clue.
So they go to Amazon expert who will do thatfor them.
So with our tools we can actually optimize thatwith AI and not only for Amazon, for each
platform there's different nuance that we canoptimize to make sure we gain the maximum
visibility on each channel.
(41:29):
So that's why I say the marketing of the bookstart way before the marketing starts, because
it start on the technical stuff that you needto know how to do.
Wow, writing is not just writing anymore, it'sbecome a science.
So what I'm trying to do is to make sure thewriters can write and we take care of
(41:50):
everything.
Yeah, I'm in awe.
And is there is there and you'll publish anybook, any kind of book?
Okay, so we do scan it, see if there'ssomething hatred about it, if it's hard to to,
I don't know, to spread hater or to create.
So you're not like Facebook who's removed allof the checks for all the bad stuff.
(42:11):
Right?
No.
But if we see that Amazon's, for some reason,banned the book, so so we unlisted from
everywhere.
Right.
We don't want to take part in anything that ishere to distribute bad stuff.
Agreed.
You know, in publishing a book, it's okay?
(42:33):
It's to breathe out, to bring out the light,okay?
So I'm here to share light, I'm not here toshare darkness.
So there are a lot of angry people who are whoare writing their I'm not here to give that a
hand.
Okay.
So so that's what we will not publish.
(42:53):
But I'm not here to determine who is worthy andwho isn't worthy to being an author.
Okay.
So as long as, let's say you spent over a yearwriting a manuscript, for me you are worthy to
get published.
There are those publishers who will tell youthat probably the book is premature, probably
it's not good enough.
(43:14):
That's not our way of doing publishing.
I believe that everyone is worthy and let'sgive the readers decide what is good and what
isn't,
you know?
Everybody has their own story.
One man's garbage is another man.
One, I can't say man.
One person's treasure is another person'sgarbage, right?
(43:35):
One person's bad story could be anotherperson's life story.
So we don't know.
And is there, in terms of, is there anyrestrictions on size of books, page count,
anything?
Is there We can take
care of everything.
We can create so many different.
We have the standard formats that we recommend.
(43:57):
Okay?
But we can take care of every every differentsize of book regarding Wow.
How boards it has, the size.
I don't know why.
I don't even I don't know why other publisherswouldn't come to you and just pay the monthly
fee on your website to have this done becauseit's the same thing.
(44:17):
Yes.
But but we will not give them the the files.
So they will have to do the distribution withus.
Well, what I'm saying is it's probably lessexpensive for them in the overall bigger
picture to come on and pay your regular retailrate and have it all managed.
(44:39):
Because I'm thinking when you sit down and youadd up all the people all the time and all the
phone calls that are required to make thingshappen.
So you could almost white label it in anotherwebsite just for them and it would still be
worth it.
Yes.
Right?
That's why we've been approached so much bypublishers.
And we figure out that now we will not focus onthat aspect of our product.
(45:03):
But maybe in later stages we will, becauseright now there are so many features we want to
develop for authors, okay?
And you maybe think that hundred people, it's alot, it's barely enough to create whatever we
are trying to create.
So everyone is working late long hours and weare trying to create as much value as possible.
(45:26):
So our roadmap is very, very tight.
But probably in later stages we will offermaybe a white label, maybe a publisher's Yeah,
you have to have a white label and even if youjust copy what you're doing now and white label
it, that's why I say for even the otherpublishers and printers and, you know, I mean,
(45:51):
I wanna talk about this.
I think this is amazing.
It's about, and even for the companies thatwould use it, could do other things within
their own company, right?
That's more focused maybe to what they do andhave this on the side.
And if you guys are, if they're working andyou're doing everything and anyone who's
listening, think about the real time and thereal hours you spend doing things.
(46:13):
I think too many of us, and I'll just say meincluded at times, you get caught up in the
actual dollar spend, but you don't look on theother side of what went into that.
And when you do, you realize, oh my God, had Idone it over there, that $5, I could have made
$50 with other ideas being creative, helpingother people.
(46:37):
Amazing.
It's not a rocket science.
It's really, and I think, guess people justcomplicate things because they get nervous,
they get worried and they get scared.
So now I have this book, I have my files.
Can I come to
you to do an audiobook?
Of course.
So so right now our we we still do not have adifferent package for audiobook only.
(47:01):
We are working on that.
Soon we will.
But for you, we can do that I can even like, ifyou could set by the way, we can even use that
podcast to to separate your voice and to createyour own voice model to generate your own
voice.
I'll do it with you, but I wasn't asking forme.
(47:21):
I was asking for people that are listening ifthey've already done a book somewhere.
So if someone's- Someone
would have those options, yes.
Okay, now if someone done a book somewhere,they have the files, can they come to you to do
the book in other languages and an audio book?
Yes,
yes, yes.
(47:43):
And if they have a space on Amazon already, areyou able to use that space?
Can you create another?
Or that's something we know about that yet, amI just coming up with new ideas?
No.
So just like the new versions of the book willbe listed on our Amazon store.
That's the way we are working.
Cool.
(48:03):
And you have like all the analytics for thesales and you I mean, you know, everybody uses
the word analytics.
It's the new inward.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
It's it.
I I can think of a few other words that comefrom that, but not the wrong right wrong place,
wrong time.
We have the old team dedicated to that.
So it's you know, eventually we are a datacompany.
(48:24):
Know, of course, we are
AI Everybody's a data company even if theydon't know it.
Yes.
Just realized that way before.
Yeah.
I mean, that is the new word.
That is the word of the century.
It doesn't matter if you're a printer, ifyou're selling socks all you want.
Listen, all everybody wants today is your emailaddress, your phone number.
(48:46):
Can I text you and could I email you?
Yes.
And then they go on to sell the list.
Yes.
Right?
For more, more, more stuff, but wow.
So I, I'm just sitting here, you know, it's notoften I come across something that just wows me
completely.
And I am just so wowed.
(49:06):
Thank you.
Particularly because I just had thisexperience.
And even when I went into it, I didn't think itwas so difficult.
It was challenging when I think back at the endto having to be, having to do, having to prove,
having to manage everything, even with who I'mdoing it with, it was even hard to understand
(49:28):
the whole Amazon process, right?
Every video you see online, there's alwaysevery expert telling you how they can make
money on Amazon.
Same company that tells you we'll do your SEOand within a month you'll be number one on
Google.
Doesn't work that way, right?
But I'm sitting and I'm just going, oh, oh my,oh my.
(49:49):
Wow.
I I I'm almost like We will never promise
any royalties.
Like like like, we cannot Get.
A a certain success with the book.
We can only make sure we are doing our best toimprove the book chances to succeed.
But if it will succeed it or not, it's behindour hands.
(50:09):
We do have the marketing tool that if you arewilling to pour marketing budget into that, it
might help.
But yet, it's it's There is a reason why only50,000 authors a year out of 2,500,000 books
being published are published traditionally.
There's a good reason why.
That's the odds, you know?
(50:32):
Well, have another 2,400,000 people to work
with, For me, it's amazing.
No, listen, even when I started this, you know,anyone who's getting into doing a book and if
you're gonna work with someone, you're in for,you know, 4 to $5,000 just for the sitting down
(50:54):
the back and forth.
And I keep holding it up to promote it, butyou're sitting down with them, the time it
takes, the doing, nothing's cheap.
And then even then after actually another cost,no one talked about, didn't think about after
we did the book and I read it, I gave it toanother proofreader that wasn't part of the
(51:17):
process, right?
Because what happens is, my own, I'll talk onlyfor myself, but if I don't see a mistake, I
will continue to not see that mistake.
I know.
Like, I is getting used to the same mistakes.
So if the same person read it again and againand again, eventually you will be
(51:38):
And my brain is too fast, right?
So it doesn't stop, it just keeps going.
It's not always the same mistakes.
So, you know, the old way of publishing, weused to have two different proofreaders, one
after another, doing the same proofreading tomake sure that no one missed any mistake.
(52:01):
And still, every book being published hasspelling mistakes in.
But with AI, we actually solve that because wescan the whole file and we find everything.
And you as an author can decide if you wouldlike to have this correction or not, but we
will find every grammar or spelling mistakes inthe book with our tool.
(52:22):
Listen, I remember, you know, we talk aboutmistakes.
I remember we used to produce annual reportsfor some big companies.
And there's a few times I remember back wherethe CEO of the company who has his picture in
his letter on the inside page, his name'sspelled wrong.
20 proofs, they've all seen it.
I wouldn't know, right?
(52:43):
But there's a If it's Michael, it was E Ainstead of A E.
It's
I'm very ashamed to say, but it's happened tome once in one of my books in New Publishing.
Like we misspelled the author's name andeveryone like went nuts.
Like how everyone missed that?
And it happens.
(53:03):
It happens.
But if you have right now, now you have theproper tools in place, those mistakes can never
happen.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Anyway, so I was just gonna finish.
So when I did when I gave out the proofing,there was another $1,500 that I did not budget
for the book, right?
So whatever my initial spend was, it just wentup.
(53:28):
And then, you know, anything else I did alongthe way that I didn't know, and I could tell
you, and you probably know and everyone else,when you do something the first time, you're as
good as dead.
Because, you know, when you, I remember when Ibought my, we bought a, I bought a 56 inches
big press for printing, and I remember, youknow, it ran thirteen, fourteen thousand sheets
an hour, and I get my first opportunity toprint a job on plastic, 500,000 sheets, and oh,
(53:52):
13,000 by the hours equals this, equals that.
I give the guy the price.
He says, okay, job's yours.
I just put the press in, 5,000,000, dollars 2hundred, a hundred feet long, whatever,
whatever.
We start running the job and then I realize,uh-oh, I don't know what I'm doing because I
didn't know about plastic.
Run the plastic, we finish the job, doesn'ttake three weeks, it takes six weeks.
(54:17):
We sit down and what did I learn?
I learned again the hard way that you need topractice, you need to speak with people.
The gentleman that I was doing it for was verykind in this learning mistake.
And he said to me, okay, you didn't run 13,000sheets, you ran 6,000 sheets, go back and re
cost the job now.
And I went, oh my God, this guy's amazing.
(54:38):
I go back, I re cost the job.
Instead of 85,000, it's 135,000.
And I'm thinking, what a sport, like great.
I sent him the quote, he calls me up, he says,listen, now your price is bang on.
Now take off $50 for the waste of plastic thatyou wasted learning how to print.
Right?
(54:59):
So same thing with the publishing or anythingelse.
Every time you make a change, the averageperson doesn't understand authors alterations.
It's not about the correction.
It's about the time the person's spending.
Yes.
Yes.
So, oh my, it's just It takes
as long as you are aligned with that, no matterwhat happened, you will fix and you will
(55:24):
optimize.
And you learn, you learn going forward.
Yes.
Right?
I remembered when I opened currently the oneand only print on demand factory in Israel.
We had a very, very long learning curve.
What's it called?
It's it's part of NIF publishing.
(55:45):
But it was very, very, very hard figureeverything out and we did lot of iteration
until we finally figure out how to publishprint on demand books.
It's not that an easy task.
You come from printing, so you probablyunderstand how complicated can it be.
(56:08):
Right, I understand it.
But the other thing is nothing's easy.
Even the easy stuff isn't easy until youactually know what you're doing.
And then by then you've already made so manymistakes that it is easy.
Yes.
But nothing's easy.
That's the
only way to learn.
In business, in fundraising, in startups, inrelationships, everything the hard way is well
(56:34):
learned, you know?
So just a little joke, you know, you wanna talkabout relationships and learning, you know,
like my first real long relationship andeverything, it was like, oh, you know what?
We don't need cards.
We don't need cards.
No Valentine's, none of those hallmark made upholidays, and you know, whatever, whatever.
And then the second time around, I realizedthat, oh, you should always buy a card on a
(56:55):
holiday.
It goes a lot farther than not.
And keep another one, just in case.
Just in case you forgot something.
Oh, well, no, gotta buy half a dozen, keep themin the drawer in case another time rolls
around.
The other thing is, you know, I realized evenwhen I was getting the books and I'm signing
(57:15):
books, you make mistakes.
So I've got 10 books where I gotta wait till Icome across people with that name, and then I'm
gonna write them a note.
Because you can't cross out, you know?
Wow, so I'm just like flabbergasted, like justwith the whole thing and just the potential for
(57:39):
ease and moving things along We're
We're gonna get better.
We will have so much that we are working onright now that whatever we have now in three,
four months, it will be much, much better.
Four months, I think in two weeks it'll bebetter.
(57:59):
In two weeks after it'll be better, right?
Cause it's all about, you know, just all aboutthe movement.
And as we go, we learn.
It's pretty, pretty cool.
I could probably think of like a hundred morethings, but I'm gonna hold off.
Why?
Because we're gonna do this again.
You have a company that I wanna follow.
(58:21):
I wanna, maybe just because I did the book andI'm now super intrigued and I don't come from a
big publishing background.
I'm in everything else, print, packaging, ondemand, whatever, but the book world is cool.
And even, you know, when we're doing the cover,my brother who's the designer, he made me go
with him to the bookstore so that we could walkaround and look at all the other books written
(58:45):
by individuals to see what it is.
And a lot of people don't have pictures, theyhave words or something.
And my brother's like, No, you're writing itabout you.
He says, You put you on the book.
Right?
And I'm like, I say, you're the designer, dowhat you want.
But it was, so the point is it was reallyimportant that I went with him to see, to know,
to begin to understand what else is out there.
(59:09):
Because you just don't wanna go on your own,but what a world to learn.
Yes.
Big, big, big.
And since the print on demand, I think the selfpublishing kind of just blew up because
everybody wants a book.
Yes.
And by the way, publish a book.
It's it's the easiest way to build yourpersonal brand because because in instant, you
(59:30):
become an expert.
Now you are an expert of that or that or that.
And if you're trying to build
That's why, honest to God, I didn't do thisbecause my whole life, my aspiration was to
print a book.
Right?
I did it because of the, you know, with thelittle consulting and wanting to speak and go
out, I put it together.
(59:51):
And then when I was putting it together, I'mlike, oh my God, that's pretty impressive.
Like I was impressed, you know?
And then my friends, they laughed.
Getting the recognition, you
actually published a book, which is very, verygood accomplishment to do because Exactly.
There are a lot of experts in lot of areas, butbut not all of them published a book.
(01:00:11):
And if you did, that's give you an advantage.
So that's gonna be your
It lets people know that you're into it.
It lets people know that you, you know, areinvesting in yourself for all the right
reasons.
So, no, very cool.
Very cool.
So yeah, we're definitely doing this again.
I'm definitely coming to Israel to take a tourof your facilities.
I know.
(01:00:32):
And hang I'm gonna hang hang out.
So
we can have a podcast here.
Oh, listen, I'll come there and set up, youknow, podcasts with some others and do them
from your place as well.
You're more than welcome.
You.
Anything to promote people.
The world needs more people promoting people,being happy, keeping things up there.
I say it all the time.
(01:00:52):
We're on this planet for a short time.
Let's make it a good time.
At the end of the day, you know, we all bleedred and we're all human.
And I like to keep it like that.
Before we close it down, do you have anythingfinal that you'd like to tell to the three
people that are listening out there?
And I joke all the time.
I'm hoping there's more than three.
(01:01:13):
But anything final?
Anything you wanna say?
I really enjoyed it.
And like my my my message is the same asalways.
If you have a book in you, don't save it fromthe world.
Let everyone give give your book a chance.
Who knows?
It's it's maybe in three thousand years,someone will read it and and and and it might
(01:01:38):
last for ages and books will probably outliveourselves.
So why not leave a mark on this planet?
Yeah, so one other benefit to that is it reallylooks good on your shelf or coffee table in
your own living room, right?
Of course.
Actually, funny thing before I get it down is Iwent to my friend's house and he was moving and
(01:01:59):
I helped him unpack and everything and we, youknow, kind of set up the place.
And I went into his room and that thing was setup and I just took my book and I put it on his
pillow.
Like, so when he went to bed at night, it waskind of sitting there and he just called me up
and he was just kind of cracking up.
Again, always trying to make a joke here andthere.
Yehuda, thank you so, so much.
This was so love to be educated.
(01:02:24):
Don't like to be schooled, I like to beeducated.
Bit of a difference.
Pleasure.
Everybody else, I really hope you enjoyed thispodcast.
I hope you enjoyed the topic.
If there's anything you wanna know, pleasereach out to me.
When I post it, I will include the website forspines.
(01:02:44):
If you know anyone who, anything interestingthat you wanna talk about, print anything, let
me know.
If you know anyone who wants to be on thepodcast, let me know.
I wanna promote print.
I wanna bring it to, I wanna bring print backto life and print is no longer dead.
Remember without print, the world does notfunction in any way.
Printing's alive, Warren Werbet, we'll see youon the next one.
(01:03:07):
Yehuda, thank you again, most appreciated.
Thank you.
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