Image: ContentShift
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Final Choice on ‘Frankfurt Thursday,’ October 20
As Publishing Perspectives readers know, ContentShift is an accelerator program offered since 2016 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels—Germany’s Publishers and Booksellers Association—with a goal of identifying and supporting promising startups working in spaces relative to books and media.At the higher level, the program is meant as a means of identifying innovative business models to promote them in the book industry.
This year, a total 39 start-ups qualified for the accelerator and after the preliminary round with 10 companies, the ContentShift jury selected five finalists for the program’s annual pitch event in Frankfurt.
Those companies advancing through the ranks get access to a top-class network of investors as well as start-up and industry experts from the book and media industry. “They also go through coaching and a co-creation workshop,” the program’s descriptive copy reads, “to examine their business models and explore current challenges and opportunities for cooperation.”
On October 20, “Frankfurt Thursday,” the jury at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 19 to 23) will select the Start-up of the Year, the company chosen for a sponsorship award of €10,000 (US$10,412).
The 2022 ContentShift Shortlist
In our listing, for descriptions of the chosen companies, we’re quoting text provided by ContentShift, lightly edited for syntax and to remove promotional jargon.
- ACTitude offers applicable psychological online courses based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The individual learning paths, exercises, and small impulses are intended to support their users in keeping calm even in emotionally challenging everyday situations.
- Enna simplifies the use of digital applications, such as video telephony or digital photo albums, for old or disabled people. Its operating concept consists only of a docking station and different cards for the actions that a user wants to carry out. As soon as the card is on the docking station, the application is started, without a touch display or cumbersome menu navigation.
- Home Safari offers “treasure hunts” for kids, combining analog hideouts with app-based puzzles and adventures. Parents can print out the puzzle pages available online, hide them in the home or garden and take photos of their hiding places. The children then use the app to look for the places shown in the photos and are guided through the adventure.
- Immer.App is designed to encourage us to read more, longer, and more comfortably in digital form. To do this, the app optimizes books according to usage for mobile phones and tablets. This is done, for example, by a position display that makes it tangible for readers to find out where they are in the digital text, or by dividing the text into smaller sections that are easy to consume and by providing information as to which section fits exactly into the next train journey.
- QuizCo converts existing documents, such as e.g. texts, into high-quality learning materials including quizzes, fill-in-the-blank texts, and flashcards. Users receive content that’s individually tailored to them and teachers save time and money when creating motivating learning offers with a gamification factor.
This is Publishing Perspectives’ 121st awards-related report produced in the 122 publication days since our 2022 operations began on January 3.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the ContentShift program is here. More from us on the German market is here.
And more from us on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.