This week is Book Expo America which is the biggest book trade show in the US. That’s a great moment for reflecting on how the book is being transformed in the age of the Internet. Mary Meeker in her slide deck chose to symbolize what she called the “re-imagining” of the book with a Kindle. But the Kindle is still primarily a carrier for traditionally written and published books. We are excited about the re-imagining of books happening on Wattpad, a USV portfolio company.
Wattpad has a rapidly growing community of readers and writers. To date 5 million user-written stories have been posted on Wattpad in 25 languages. Last month alone people spent 1.7 billion minutes reading on Wattpad! Most of this is happening via mobile but more importantly it is happening outside the traditional publishing cycles. Given this tremendous growth, we are excited that Khosla Ventures has just led a new round of financing for Wattpad. You can read more about Wattpad’s growth, vision and the funding on the company’s blog. Congratulations to the Wattpad team!