Macmillan Acquires Self-Pub Distributor Pronoun
When Vook announced last May that it was reorganizing as Pronoun and pivoting to offer a distribution platform which was free to authors, many people were left wondering just how Pronoun would keep the lights on.
They said they were going to generate revenue from outside development work, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Now it looks like Pronoun had another plan.
Pronoun has sent out an email to authors who signed up with the platform, informing them that the company had been acquired:
That’s why we’re excited to announce that Pronoun is joining Macmillan Publishers, a global trade book publishing company with over 100 years experience, and amazing imprints around the world. Macmillan shares our philosophy that publishing exists to serve the full spectrum of authors. By joining forces, we’ll be able to invest even more in improving and growing Pronoun’s self-publishing platform, all while giving successful independent authors a path towards more opportunity.
As a division of Macmillan, we’ll be doubling down on Pronoun’s free core platform, while also investing in additional levels of service and support. We will continue to make the best products we can, starting with the needs of authors and building from there. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on lately!
That’s an oddly appropriate next step for a company that has more pivots in the past 7 years than any other in the digital publishing space.
Pronoun got its start as Vook in 2009. At the time, it was a publisher which made enhanced ebook apps for the iPhone. It later expanded to include the iPad and Android apps, and enhanced ebooks for Kindle and other platforms, and then pivoted to making the enhanced ebooks as a service for authors and publishers.
And then in 2012 it pivoted to focus on distributing ebooks, including all types, before finally rebranding in 2015 itself as Pronoun.
And now it’s a Macmillan sub.
How long do you think it will be before Macmillan kills it?
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