TREND: WILL INSTANT PUBLISHING LEAD TO NEW TECHNIQUES AND FORMS OF DISTRIBUTION?

“In the digital age, storytelling has changed dramatically,” says Dr. Hannes Steiner, founder of the start-up story.one. But the publishing world has not adapted to this and has not changed either, he noted at the Online Print Symposium 2024 in Munich – not without a vision of how this could be changed.

For example, books have not yet followed the trend towards “short formats” – as can be seen on tiktok or even on YouTube with the “shorts” – even though the number of genuine bestseller titles is constantly falling and publishers themselves are under increasing cost pressure. Meanwhile, authors often have their own community and could theoretically publish books themselves. And this is exactly where story.one comes in. “Because we believe that everyone has a story to tell, even if less than one percent of people currently write their own book,” says Hannes Steiner. The world has become faster and shorter – and the book hasn’t yet. This is exactly where we want to fill a gap.”

However, with story.one, Steiner, who himself comes from a traditional publishing house, has created an integrative, dynamic, fast and intuitive platform on which anyone can share their personal stories – regardless of genre – simply, quickly and to a global audience. At the same time, story.one is not just a tool, but also a community with more than 100,000 users and over 10,000 authors. “It’s not a publishing house, it’s not self-publishing. It’s something completely unique. For me, it’s something like ‘the tiktok for books’,” says the founder.

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