Lakeland startup makes tech-driven advances in publishing field

Imagine you’ve finally finished that manuscript that has been bouncing around in your mind for years. You send it off to a publishing company in hopes of landing a deal and wait months to hear anything, if you even get a response at all. Fred Koehler and Sarah McGuire, a husband and wife team and established authors, are all too familiar with this process. So in 2022 the couple co-founded Ready Chapter 1, a Lakeland-based startup that, using data analytics, aims to predict a New York Times bestseller before it even hits the shelves. 

The data comes from a surprising source: other authors and agents on an online platform who give and receive feedback based on metrics in a rubric developed by Koehler and McGuire. The platform has a membership tier model that at the pro-level includes extra forum features, agent contests and access to the Total Story Accelerator education suite. The company says it has 2,000 writers on its platform; it declines to disclose revenue figures.