Create a Crowdsourced Biography with StoryStarter
Founded on 5 February 2014, Story Terrace’s aim is to capture their customer’s personal stories in a compact book, with the help of a professional writer. The incentive makes creating a professionally written biography accessible to anyone, so in 50 years everyone can read about their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Each of their customers are personally matched with a freelance journalist or author from their pool. Together, they produce an intimate story with a fluent narrative that reflects the voice of the customer.
Now, Story Terrace has launched StoryStarter, the world’s first social group gifting platform that brings friends and family together to create and fund a ghostwritten biography for a loved one. It’s the next step to make the ghostwritten books more accessible by making it easy to fund as a group-gift.
Already, the platform is recieving rave reviews. Product Hunt positioned StoryStarter as one of their highlighted platforms to watch and Story Terrace was selected as one of the world’s most promising early age-start ups at this November’s Web Summit.
Founder, Rutger Bruining said, “We’ve been really pleased with the positive response we’ve received from both the tech and publishing communities together with the customers who’ve already registered to create a gift for one of their loved ones, whilst still in beta.
“We’ve seen people start campaigns for a 40th birthday party and a wedding. Others are looking into more creative ideas such as books about a Welsh rugby legend from the 80s, an eccentric Greek hotel owner, the experience of a group of volunteers in Kenya and a tech business that just went through a year of unprecedented growth. We’re so happy to be able to give these stories a platform to be able to be told and shared with a wider audience.”
Crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter, Unbound and GiftStarter have grown rapidly in the last few years, so it seems only right that a platform combining group-gifting and crowdsourcing content for professionally written biographies becomes available. StoryStarter invites friends, family or colleagues to join the campaign page where members can contribute photos, anecdotes or funds towards the biography’s creation. Once funds have been raised, the StoryStarter receives a Welcome Package to gift to the StoryTeller on their special occasion. In this way, a unique archive of social history is created.
“StoryStarter is different as the crowd is not just asked to pay for someone’s book, but also to help source stories and focus to make the content of the book richer. I think there will be a generation of new crowdfunding and sourcing platforms that ask participants to contribute ideas and their opinion to which direction the campaign should go,” Rutger commented.
“It will become so much more personal to the user and that can only be a good thing.”
Story Book packages start from £800 for a 50-page book.
Visit the Story Terrace website for more info.