Kevin Gao, a former consultant at McKinsey, wrote a 90-page tract he called The Consulting Bible about how to get a job at McKinsey and began selling the e-book at $25 apiece. Last year, he says, the title made more than $100,000.
According to BusinessWeek, Gao’s success motivated him to start a company to help other writers find a market for their e-books.
Hyperink aims to produce meatier content than a content mill, it also plans to be nimbler than a traditional how-to publisher—a market currently dominated by John Wiley & Sons’s For Dummies series.
“There are experts around the world that have not yet written the book on how to work with papier-mâché or how to cook with oil,” says Scott Weiss, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who took part in the decision to invest in Hyperink.
I have to admit I’m pretty enticed by the idea of publishing e-books. Don’t know that I need the help of a service like Hyperink, but I do need help formatting the titles and getting them prepared for all the different e-reader platforms.