Today, the New York–based Serial Box is announcing a $1.65 million investment in seed funding for a “reading/listening mobile platform” development that will, as the name implies, offer the option of both reading and listening as a premium service to subscribers.
Serial Box is a startup created in 2016 by Molly Barton, formerly the global digital director for Penguin and the driving force behind the company’s Book Country platform. Her company is unusual not least because it creates its own original content; most of its serials are authored by teams of writers. The installments are distributed weekly in both ebook and audio formats through the Serial Box app and website and through third-party retailers. During a three-month season, each week’s episode is a 30-minute read or an hour-long listen. Readers/listeners pay $1.59 week by week or $18 in advance for a whole season of 10 to 13 episodes.
Serial Box’s model is similar to TV series models; Serial Box has called itself the “HBO for readers.” And in fact the new funding round is led by Boat Rocker Media, perhaps best known for the TV series Orphan Black. The coming together of Serial Box and Boat Rocker is auspicious for Barton’s company, as Boat Rocker’s Michel Pratte—speaking from the viewpoint of a production executive—says that he sees a “top-tier publishing studio” in the making, something that should be able to generate television/film production after starting with a serialized book.
Bottom line: This season for Serial Box, the idea is to sync up reading and audio without making consumers buy both the text and audio editions of serials. Not for nothing is another of Barton’s new investors Richard Sarnoff, who was previously a co-chair of Bertelsmann and a board member of Audible. If you’re interested in working with Serial Box on its original, episodic production teams, send a 150-word description of what you write, including specific categories and links to published books, to info@serialbox.com.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
