Spines raises $6.5 million for AI-driven platform to upend hundred-year-old publishing process
The Israeli startup’s platform reduces publishing time from six months to two weeks while reducing costs by 30% and offering a suite of services for every stage of the journey
Spines, which has developed an AI publishing platform, announced on Tuesday a $6.5 million Seed round led by Aleph, with participation from best-selling “Startup Nation” Co-Author Dan Senor, LionTree LLC, and existing investor Lior Elkan's M-Fund.
Full list of Israeli high-tech funding rounds in 2024
According to Spines, its platform reduces publishing time from six months to two weeks while reducing costs by 30% and offering a suite of services for every stage of the journey.
Spine’s AI, under the guidance of a production manager, undertakes a detailed editing process, designs the book art by creating 70+ formatted versions of the front, back, and spine for the author to choose from, and allows authors to decide when they would like to upgrade to a human at any part of the process. Beyond putting the book together, Spines also aims to ensure it has the highest chances of success by automating the metadata optimization process and listing the book across 100+ channels. After the book is live, the platform provides users additional options for AI-driven marketing features, royalty management, and distribution.
Spines was founded by Yehuda Niv (CEO), Lev David (CMO) and Nir Kenner (CTO). The company currently employs about 50 people.
Using an AI-driven strategy, Spines founder Niv went from an unknown upstart to publishing 15% of the books in Israel within a decade. Last year, Spines published over 500 titles and plans to publish a total of 3,000 new titles by the end of this year. That rate compares to an approximately 9-per-day average of top publishers. Funds from this round will be utilized to enhance brand awareness, streamline the publishing process for even more authors, and continue improving the product itself.
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“This investment round represents a critical step in advancing our proven use case and rapidly expanding availability in a market in need of a tech-enabled alternative to the costly, inefficient status quo,” said Yehuda Niv, CEO and founder of Spines. “We look forward to working with this group of top investors and authors as we continue our expansion amongst self-publishing, bolster our offering, and allow an increasing number of authors to focus on what they love most - telling their stories.”
"Spines is exactly where we want to invest in AI," says Michael Eisenberg, Equal Partner at Aleph. "Spines leverages all AI advances to make an old industry much more efficient, available to more customers, and better at its job. As an author, I can tell you that the current book publishing process is expensive, painful, and long. Yehuda - a publisher himself - and his team are exactly the right people to bring every aspect of the book publishing process into the AI-led, fast-paced 21st century."
