I'd started writing online as a way to share what I was learning in the industry, and when I hit 10 years I realised that I had created hundreds of posts, and within all of it there was probably a narrative and collection of the best that would be valuable if arranged and brought together in a book. I think people read books differently to how they read online, and people wouldn't want to navigate through hundreds of webpages - but the experience of sitting and reading would be much more enjoyable. I love books, well-made books. and the idea of creating a very limited run to mark a milestone also appealed to me.

We spoke to Ali Albazaz, CEO and founder of Inkitt, a data-driven publisher that uses an artificially intelligent algorithm to analyse online users' reading patterns. With a background in computer science, Ali believes predictive analysis has the potential to make the publishing industry more fair and objective. We asked him about how he came to form his company with designer Linda Gavin, the value of data in book agenting and how they built up the site's core audience and readership.

We spoke to Guy Vincent, founder of crowd-publishing startup Publishizer. Publishizer allows authors to gather pre-orders for their books in order to be matched with the publisher or publishing service providers that are best for them. Guy elaborated on the challenging initial period of setting up his business, the future of publishing and why we should be looking to data for our answers.

We asked Emma Barnes, Founder & CEO of Bibliocloud and MD of Snowbooks, some questions on Bibliocloud, programming and entrepreneurship in publishing.