A Private Equity firm was considering an investment into a platform that support self-published authors by providing services such as editing, cover art design, marketing, and distribution

Client was looking to evaluate the attractiveness of this platform by assessing its market size, growth dynamics, consumer purchasing decision making process, and competitive differentiation

Recruited and interviewed self-published authors to understand their decision-making process for selecting a support platforms

Interviewed experts from competitors to evaluate market and competitive dynamics

Executed an online survey of ~200 authors from the general population and ~100 authors that are Target’s customers, to build quantitative support for the key findings and evaluate the differences in platform utilization across different customer segments

There is a large ~$500m TAM for self-publishing support services

Self-publishing increasingly is seen as legitimate way for authors to get published supporting market growth

There is strong potential for the platform to reach its target customer segments through paid search and SEO

The competition in the market is limited with the largest competitor declining and a long tail of smaller publishers