Unbound: from idea in a pub to award-winning publishing platform
In an extract from his new book Dan Kieran shares his start-up story. Read how he went from pints in the pub with two friends to publishing Unbound’s first book…
It was October 2009 and I arrived at the Bricklayers Arms in Soho to meet fellow writers and friends John Mitchinson and Justin Pollard. I was in a financially difficult place at the time. My bestselling book Crap Towns, published in 2003, had earned me more throws of the publishing dice but none of my subsequent titles had made as much of an impact. I relied on what I was earning through writing books and travel journalism but both industries were making cutbacks as a result of the economic crash the year before. With no qualifications or university degree to fall back on, I was doing jobs for minimum wage to pay the bills. A few weeks before going to London, I’d been clearing out the rat-infested basement of an accounting firm in Bognor Regis, when I came up with a radical plan. Both John and Justin were bestselling authors too, so I knew they would give me honest feedback. A few pints in, I told them what I was going to do.
I explained I had sold around 350,000 copies of my books around the world but because of the nature of the publishing industry — where authors rely on intermediaries to reach their readers — I was now completely cut off from the people who might provide me with an income. I lamented how stupid I had been and they both nodded ruefully, but surely it was just the writer’s lot to be reliant on publishers? The business model for the industry had barely changed in 500 years.
For my next book, I continued, I would try a more sustainable approach. One not subject to the whims of what a publisher thought would sell. Kevin Kelly’s blog post 1,000 True Fans was doing the rounds at the time (published in March 2008, it suggested that if you found 1,000 people who loved your creative work enough to pay you $100 a year you could build a sustainable income) and I decided to make a video about the book I wanted to write and ask potential readers to buy it in advance. If enough did, I would be able to write it and send them a copy. Crucially, I would be building up a database of people who enjoyed my work. Twitter, which was about to super-charge this approach, was only three years old at the time and had come into public consciousness earlier that year in Britain when Stephen Fry tweeted to his then 100,000 followers ‘Ok. This is now mad. I am stuck in a lift …’
‘That’s brilliant!’ said Justin.
John, who had run publishers before, sat back in his chair and grinned. ‘Have you heard of Kickstarter?’ I shook my head. It was only six months old. ‘People are using it to raise money to publish books.’ His face turned sour but then brightened as something dawned on him. ‘They keep emailing me to ask how to be a publisher, which of course is a nightmare … but if you did both … crowdfunding and built a publishing house … it would be like bringing an 18th-century publishing model into the 21st century.’
Justin sat forward in his chair. ‘Subscription in advance! Like Dickens and Voltaire but powered by the internet!’
‘It really is a brilliant idea,’ they both agreed, ‘but not just for you, Dan. All authors need it!’
And that, as you might say, was that. Over more pints we vowed to place our friendship before the business should things ever go awry and split the ownership of the company three ways. I would be CEO because I had come up with the seed of the idea — ‘And because you need a bloody job,’ said Justin, with a wink. He then added cryptically, ‘I bet Terry’s got a book for us …’
It took lots of meet-ups in pubs, and a few more in the club at the top of the same Centre Point tower that Stephen Fry was on his way up in that stuttering lift, but 18 months later, on 31 May 2011 at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales, Unbound went live. Our first book, Evil Machines by Terry Jones (from Monty Python), got funded and hit the shops in time for Christmas.
We were off.
Extract from Do Start: How to create and run a business (that doesn’t run you) by Dan Kieran. Text copyright © Dan Kieran 2023. Illustrations copyright © Mark Smith 2023. Published by The Do Book Co.
Extract from Do Start: How to create and run a business (that doesn’t run you) by Dan Kieran. Text copyright © Dan Kieran 2023. Illustrations copyright © Mark Smith 2023. Published by The Do Book Co.
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Dan Kieran is co-founder of Unbound, the award-winning publishing platform that he led as CEO for over 11 years, taking the business from an idea on a piece of paper to a profitable, global company. Having stepped down in March 2022, he remains on the board as a non-executive director and now teaches on the Publishing MA at University College London.
He is the author (and editor) of thirteen books including the bestselling Crap Towns, The Idle Traveller and The Surfboard. He has given talks about his entrepreneurial journey at Google, The DO Lectures, Toronto’s Book Summit, London Book Fair, Hay Festival, Cambridge University and the EU Parliament.
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