Novoly

Novoly: a Netflix-style app for short romance novels

Ramon and Sam Parr built Novoly, an app where people read or listen to short romantic stories. They validated it by putting an ugly WordPress site with a few stories in front of soap opera readers and saw fans begging for the next chapter.

“Novoly is actually a platform where where people can read short romantic stories, short romantic novels, books, on their iPhone or tablet, either read it or listen to it. So it's a book but also an audio version. Me and Sam came up with the idea, we were back and forth, we are really good friends, we always come up with weird and crazy ideas, and we came up with this idea when I still had the soap opera website and I still had access to all these readers.”

Steal thisValidate a new content product by funneling an existing audience to a bare-bones page and watching for organic demand.

Romance readers devour a book every two weeks vs. 5/year average

The average American reads about 5 books a year, but the average romance novel reader reads roughly one book every two weeks. That frequency plus a huge audience is why Ramon and Sam built Novoly around romance fiction.

“on average in America, a person reads 5 books a year. The average romantic novel reader reads every one book every 2 weeks.”