In November we took the Pitch Competition stage at Web Summit in Lisbon, one of the largest technology conferences in the world. A few minutes on stage, a panel of judges and direct questions. We explained what Vellam is and why we are building it.
The problem we talked about
The road from a book’s last page to its first reader is long today, and full of waiting rooms.
A single publisher receives hundreds of manuscripts a year, sometimes more than a dozen a day. Nobody can read them all cover to cover, so decisions get made after the first few pages. Good books get lost in the pile, and authors wait months for an answer or never hear back at all.
Once a book finally gets the green light, another queue begins. Editors and proofreaders are booked for weeks, and every round of revisions adds more weeks. A text the author finished long ago reaches readers a year later, or more.
Faster to readers
Vellam reads every page of a manuscript in minutes. Authors get a thorough reading and proofreading without standing in line, so what they send to a publisher is a text they have already worked on. Publishers see right away which submissions to read first, how they are written and who the book can be sold to.
Fewer months of waiting on both sides means good books get out of the pile sooner, through editing sooner and into promotion sooner.
A home for every book
We closed the pitch with one line: “A home for every book.” Every good book deserves someone who reads it carefully, and a road to readers that does not take years.
What comes next
For us Web Summit was above all about conversations: with publishers, investors and teams building tools for the book market. We are coming home with new contacts and the conviction that good books can reach readers much faster than they do today.
See how Vellam reads an entire manuscript before it lands on a publisher's desk.
First ~5,000 words are free.
Your text stays yours · We never train models on it