5 Minutes with our Heroes: Michael Bhaskar

In the lead up to our From Zero to Hero! event on September 22nd at Rich Mix, we’re celebrating each of our panelists and speakers.

Next up, we have Michael Bhaskar, a writer and publisher based in London and Oxford. He is co-founder of Canelo, a new digital publisher, and author of The Content Machine and Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Too Much. He regularly speaks about the future of business, media, culture and society.

Give us your elevator pitch…

At Canelo we are digital publisher offering authors the best possible deal while working with publishing and technology best practices.

Now explain it to your Mother in Law. 

Canelo has always been about something very simple: being a great publisher. That’s it. We want to embrace technology and new ways of working, but at our heart we are about finding the best stories, working closely with writers and do everything we can to put our books in the hands of as many readers as possible. We are a digital company, but it’s doing the same things publishers have always done. It’s all too easy to come up with a complex proposition as a business. We want to keep it simple but incredibly effective.

What inspired you to start Canelo?

My co-founders Iain Millar and Nick Barreto and I founded Canelo firstly because we wanted to give author’s the best possible deal. We realised that in the age of indie authors publishers needed to offer something better, and so we created a contract that was designed to be as transparent and fair as possible. In addition we wanted to create a publisher built around and optimised for ebooks. Too often they were an afterthought when, despite all the talk, they dominate sales in certain categories. That does the readers of those books a disservice.

Who’s the team behind Canelo?

As above there is myself, Iain and Nick, and also Simon Collinson and Maisie Lawrence. We are a small, tight knit and but growing team.

What’s your top tip for getting a project off the ground?

Planning. Nothing happens as quickly as you want it to, and will almostly certainly happen more slowly, but the more planned out in advance you can have things, the better. Then I would say perseverance. The highs and lows with a start-up are all felt more intensely and they all come more often. Get ready and enjoy the ride.

What can we expect to hear from you at our From Zero to Hero event?

I’ll try not to bang on about my new book too much… Promise. It’s called CURATION is worth reading. Sorry.

You can find Michael on Twitter @michaelbhaskar.

Early Bird tickets to From Zero to Hero! are available here.