Agnes Kozera and David Kierzkowski, the co-founders of podcast sponsorship market Podcorn, at the moment launched their latest app—Storiaverse, a short-form leisure platform that provides a multi-format studying expertise, combining animated video and written content material.
Out there on iOS and Android gadgets, Storiaverse caters to graphic novel readers and grownup animation followers who need to uncover authentic tales in a short-form, animated format.
“Our mission is to make Storiaverse the largest storytelling platform and to make studying extra immersive and interesting,” Kozera informed Gadget Guru Weblog, who additionally co-founded YouTube advertising platform FameBit (which Google acquired in 2016).
“We imagine our format not solely caters to current followers of literature and animation but in addition has the potential to draw wider audiences which might be looking for new types of leisure…Even individuals who have shied away from studying as a result of they’re extra [visual readers] can get pleasure from studying by means of our patent-pending read-watch format,” she stated.
Storiaverse’s “Learn-Watch” format is precisely the way it sounds. Customers swipe up on a narrative to look at a sequence of animated clips, then faucet on the display screen to enter studying mode. There’s additionally an choice to skip the movies if they like studying all of the chapters first after which going again to view the animation. Tales vary in size, from 5 minutes lengthy to 10.
At launch, Storiaverse gives 25 authentic titles spanning genres comparable to science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, and comedy. Creators who launched tales on the app embody animator Josh Ryba, who has contributed to tasks comparable to Netflix exhibits “Raised by Wolves” and “One Piece;” animator Jonathan Fontaine, who has labored on the Disney film “Descendants;” and author John M. Floyd, who has been featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s Thriller Journal, amongst others.
Notably, guide writer HarperCollins can be partnering with the corporate to adapt titles like Madeleine Roux’s horror novel sequence Asylum and Joelle Charbonneau’s new fantasy sequence Dividing Eden. Moreover, TikTok star and unbiased animator King Science (Science Akbar) is teaming as much as create an unique story on the app.
There are presently over 100 creators working with Storiaverse and greater than 100 tales in growth.
Storiaverse launches at a time when many creators are panicking about the way forward for TikTok, the ByteDance-owned short-form video app the place many storytellers have constructed a large viewers (like King Science and his 13 million followers) and use the platform to indicate off their work.
Like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, Storiaverse gives an extra income stream for creators.
“There’s a huge group of unbiased writers who usually battle for recognition and compensation. We imagine their content material could be invigorated in a extra trendy format to achieve new readers,” Kozera stated, including that Storiaverse compensates each writers and animators for his or her contributions to the app. “The [compensation] price varies primarily based on components comparable to size and complexity of the story,” she defined.
The corporate may additionally take different pages out of its competitor’s playbooks by bringing in advertisements, merchandise, and subscriptions. One other concept on the desk is including product placement to movies, Kozera informed us.
Storiaverse says it has already acquired hundreds of submissions from writers. Creators can apply on Storiaverse’s web site. When writers are accepted, they’re related with an animator who helps carry the phrases to life.
The corporate can be constructing a Creator Suite for creators to collaborate with one another, entry story efficiency insights and discover “extra monetization alternatives,” Kozera stated.
Storiaverse has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding led by 500 International.