Publishing giant Gramedia launched Gramediana this week, an online marketplace for Indonesian publications. For the moment, Gramediana only provides an e-commerce facility for visitors who wish to purchase ebooks and printed works on demand. It’s a lot like NulisBuku, a startup that pioneered online self-publishing in Indonesia.
Simply put, Gramediana provides a community platform and marketplace for publishers, writers, and readers. The site is being introduced during Kompas Gramedia Fair 2013 which is being held this week, from the 13th to 17th. Gramediana is expected to become a complete ecosystem for the industry. During this soft-launch period, the site only offers digital books, which are readable on the desktop and mobile devices.
Taking a cue from Amazon, Gramediana provides affiliate links for its members who, if they choose to be affiliates, will receive rewards if they manage to convince others to join the site or purchase books from the site. This may help spur book sales to grow rapidly.
According to information on the website, writer will get 50% of the profits from sales of digital books and 10% from sales of printed books. Prices of printed books tend to be higher as prices for ebooks are generally set at 75% or the printed version.
There may be a number of startups following the path of NulisBuku but for large scale publishing groups like Kompas Gramedia this sort of publishing model could be more disruptive to the industry as a whole.
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