Publishing Startup Cuts Costs and Achieves Profitability

The Spun Yarn provides a beta-reading service to help authors gather feedback on their manuscripts before publishing. Initially, their process relied heavily on manual work, including tracking everything through Excel spreadsheets and one Gmail account. Orders were fulfilled by sending mass emails to beta readers and manually selecting three to review each manuscript. This process was inefficient, leading to delays, errors, and high labor costs.

The manual workflow created several operational issues, including feedback mix-ups and time-consuming management tasks. With each step—from beta reader coordination to feedback collection—requiring hands-on involvement, the business was losing 3% on every order. After four years of operating at a loss, The Spun Yarn needed a way to streamline operations and reduce costs.

David partnered with The Spun Yarn to overhaul their process using low-cost tools like Asana, Google Forms, and Zapier. The new system automated key tasks: order submissions automatically triggered manuscript intake in Asana, beta readers were notified and assigned based on availability and genre preferences, and all feedback was collected and tracked seamlessly. The assessment writing process was also streamlined, automatically generating InDesign files for final reports.

This automation and process redesign reduced the cost per manuscript by 18%, transforming The Spun Yarn’s financial outlook. For the first time in four years, they became profitable and have remained so ever since.