TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is turning a new page in book publishing

After aggressively selling the brand new way of life social media platform Lemon8 within the US, ByteDance appears to be making ready one other content material app for its largest abroad market.

Lemon Inc, a subsidiary of ByteDance, has filed emblems for a variety of e book publishing services and products. filing Revealed in the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO). The trademark, referred to as “8TH NOTE PRESS,” provides an attention-grabbing have a look at ByteDance’s apparent e-publishing ambitions.

The trademark utility was earlier reported by Enterprise Insider.

The listing of services and products registered with 8TH NOTE PRESS consists of: utility for studying, downloading and discussing fiction e-books in a web-based neighborhood; retail bookstore companies; ordering books in audio, print and digital format; publishing e-books, audiobooks and bodily books; in addition to offering on-line, downloadable fiction and non-fiction books.

Firms at all times register emblems in anticipation of increasing into new industries sooner or later, however they don’t specify timelines or maintain registrants below any obligation, so switching to the 8TH NOTE PRESS trademark doesn’t imply ByteDance has acquired any materials. He has not but stepped into the publishing world.

However given TikTok’s success in attracting e book lovers to share below the hashtag #BookTok on its brief video platform, publishing and distributing books looks like the logical subsequent steps for ByteDance. Whereas ByteDance as an entire posted report income final yr, TikTok itself has additionally suffered rising losses, the Monetary Occasions reported. reported. ByteDance could also be keen to seek out new methods to monetize its lots of of tens of millions of abroad customers.

The trademarking effort is “not about Tiktok,” however ByteDance is “at all times in search of new alternatives,” in accordance with one individual acquainted with the matter. That is to be anticipated, because the bite-sized nature of brief movies would not match long-form readings that require an extended consideration span.

TechCrunch reached out to ByteDance for remark.

It will not be stunning to see ByteDance launch a standalone e book app the place customers can learn, obtain, purchase, and speak about books, as evidenced by its trademark registration.

Whereas TikTok would not distribute books immediately, it could actually definitely assist drive customers to the potential e book app, because it did for Lemon8 by recruiting influencers to advertise its lifestyle-focused social media platform.

The heaps of person information and insights TikTok collects can be utilized to grasp what individuals prefer to learn, and the identical sort of content material advice algorithms that suggest movies on TikTok can be utilized to supply new books to learn in a separate app.

If ByteDance goes into e-publishing, the query is the way it plans to compete with trade large Amazon in publishing and distributing books. And the place to suit into what has in any other case formed what can be a extremely fragmented market within the lengthy tail.

There’s scant information on on-line publishing, and Amazon has by no means disclosed a lot in regards to the operation’s revenues and, the place it does, may be very imprecise about these metrics. It is also an insurmountable activity to maintain monitor of all self-published books through Kindle, as they do not all have worldwide identifiers or ISBN numbers because the Wordsrated analysis group. sign.

Nevertheless, Amazon’s place as a well-liked writer, distributor, and {hardware} participant (through Kindle) most likely offers it an enormous foothold on this market. Trade skilled Benedict Evans estimated On the finish of 2019, Amazon had “50% or extra of the US print e book market and not less than three-quarters of publishers’ e-book gross sales.”

ByteDance’s benefit over books clearly lies in its sprawling social media empire, the place authors and followers can join immediately and readers can share their ideas with others.

This function, successfully, remains to be up for grabs. The closest Amazon has come to constructing a web-based neighborhood for its readers is when it purchased the social studying web site GoodReads a decade in the past.

GoodReads’ integration with different Amazon properties has been restricted at finest, with Wi-Fi-connected Kindle readers sometimes seeing GoodReads highlights, with GoodReads making the Kindle the default buy choice. However the 16-year-old e book assessment web site nonetheless appears to be like robust with 125 million “members” and three.5 billion books cataloged. by company.

ByteDance is not any stranger to ebooks. In 2020, information broke out that Yuewen, the publicly traded Chinese language e-book reader, will purchase roughly 11% (deal completed). It additionally runs Tomato Novel, one in every of China’s hottest internet novel apps, permitting readers to learn free of charge with advertisements or pay a month-to-month subscription price for an ad-free expertise. struggled in 2021 Running an English web fiction application It was referred to as Mytopia, overlaying the romance, horror, and fantasy genres. Versus giving money incentives to TikTok creators, it gave out prizes to draw novelists.

Earlier than Mytopia has an opportunity to develop meaningfully, captured anti-aircraft For posting erotic advertisements on Fb and Instagram. 8TH NOTE PRESS ought to know higher this time.