O'Reilly Media, Inc. is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that provides technical and professional skills development courses via an online learning platform. O'Reilly also publishes books about programming and other technical content. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an animal on many of its book covers. The company was known as a popular tech conference organizer for more than 20 years before closing the live conferences arm of its business.
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a book printer that is paid by authors to self-publish their books. A vanity press charges fees in advance and does not contribute to the development of the book. It has been described as a scam, though, as the book does get printed, it does not necessarily rise to the level of fraud. The term vanity press is derogatory, so it is not used by the printers. Some self-publishing businesses prefer to market themselves as an independent press, and some authors who are self-publishing through CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle prefer to market themselves as indie authors instead of as self-publishing authors.
Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group, a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles.
Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and was entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies started via Y Combinator include Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is a podcaster, American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, and author.
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.
Timothy Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He is known for his 4-Hour self-help book series—including The 4-Hour Work Week, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef—that focused on lifestyle optimizations, but he has since reconsidered this approach. He also supports scientific research into psychedelic treatments.
Pronoun was a New York–based company that provided free book publishing, marketing, and analytics services to authors. Pronoun was launched in 2015.
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.
An ebook, also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Ben Huh is a South Korean-American internet entrepreneur and the former CEO of The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites.
Graphicly was a platform for publishers which offered work flow integration, self-publishing, digital distribution, conversion, and promotion for digital content. Launched by Kevin Mann and Micah Baldwin, the website was initially a platform for digital comic books, but later added support for children's books, art books, and magazines. Graphicly accumulated more than 3,500 publishers and more than 10,000 independent creators. The website hosted an active social community, allowing creators and fans to interact directly. Graphicly shut down in May 2014, and some of its key staff moved on to fellow digital publisher Blurb.
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's book publishing unit launched in 2009. It is composed of 15 imprints including AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and Topple Books.
Library.nu, previously called ebooksclub.org from 2004 to 2007 and gigapedia.com from 2007 to 2010, was a popular linking website. It was accused of copyright infringement and shut down by court order on February 15, 2012. According to the takedown notice, it hosted some 400,000 ebooks.
Oyster was a commercial streaming service for digital e-books, available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and NOOK HD/HD+ devices. It was also available on any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Oyster held over 1 million books in its library, and as of September 2015, the service was only available in the United States.
Zulily is an American e-commerce website with operations headquartered in Midvale, Utah. Its target audience are young mothers interested in brand-name goods for their children.
Homejoy, Inc. was an online platform which connected customers with home service providers, including house cleaners and handymen. The company was based in San Francisco. Homejoy served the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom for a total of over 31 major cities. It charged a variable rate of $25–$35 per hour. Homejoy shut down on July 31, 2015.
Jared Friedman is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is a partner at Y Combinator in San Francisco, where he invests in and helps startups. Previously, Jared was the co-founder and CTO at Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users.
Morgan James Publishing is an American independent book publisher and distributor, specializing in non-fiction, fiction, faith and kids categories.
A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid publishers comes from both book sales and fees charged to the author for the execution of their publishing services.
