Do you have a blog? A daily journal? Then you’ve probably thought of turning it into a book, and chances are, you dropped the idea when you found out about the hassles of publishing houses and all the bureaucracy. Then you discovered self-publishing, but it was too late – the “e” generation had arrived. Well, now Moglue is your road to success. Moglue’s founders dreamed of a world where anyone could publish their work and made it happen.

Could you tell us a bit more about your backgrounds?

Well, we have CEO and cofounder, Taewoo Kim, who studied math, industrial engineering, management and worked at a VC firm in Silicon Valley. He loves working with passionate people, and builds key partnerships, strategic business opportunities and funding endeavors. Then we have CTO and co-founder, Ryan Kim who studied computer science and electronics. He’s worked mainly on C/Python/PHP/ ASP at three different web developing companies in Korea. He loves learning and is the brainchild behind Moglue, and behind the overseas development of the Moglue Builder and MoglueBooks. And then you have me. I suppose the most appropriate title for me is CMO and co-founder, although we’re not at a stage in development where we’re really pushing marketing. I studied finance and information technology management, and worked in education. Music is my life, and I’m passionate about creative expression. I help connect the product to the users, and vice versa.

How did you come up with the idea to create Moglue?

TaeWoo, Ryan and I met in May 2010 at a Startup Weekend event in Seoul, South Korea. Atomic Antelope’s “Alice for the iPad” had just been released, and was a huge hit. It was a beautiful example of the storytelling possibilities on these new devices, and served as our inspiration. We thought it would be cool if we could help people tell stories like that, so we spent three days developing the concept behind what would eventually become Moglue. By end of the third day we had a working prototype.

“We thought it would be cool if we could help people tell stories, so we spent three days developing the concept behind what would eventually become Moglue”

How would you explain Moglue to our readers?

We’ve created a desktop platform that allows publishers, authors and artists a way to create interactive ebooks and release them as apps for iOS and Android devices. There are two components: the Moglue Builder, and MoglueBooks. The builder is the desktop platform that allows people to create these interactive ebook apps. MoglueBooks is our store, and a harbor for finding the best interactive ebooks on both iOS and Android. It includes a viewer component that allows people to preview the books they are building with the authoring platform. The Moglue App is free, and will always remain so. Users can also import their own art and sounds. We support JPEG, GIF, TIF and PNG formats for images, and MP3, M4A, MP4 and WAV files for sounds. We’ll soon support video and sprite options as well. We’re currently working on our end-to-end publishing system, and plan to release it at the conclusion of our open beta. This will allow users to submit content to us for internal approval. If the content is approved, we’ll be able to publish it immediately to our store. Depending on the publishing channels the users chooses, we can also then submit it to the Apple App Store and Android Market. Apple has their own approval process, so it may take a few extra weeks before content sent to their store is approved, but it does save people a lot of hassle.

What kind of people are using Moglue and what are they using it for?

We’re primarily reaching out to artists, authors, and publishers. These are people who already have content or stories, and would like to explore the wide world of apps. We’ve also gotten quite a bit of interest from educators, who have their students create stories and art to share with other classes. I spoke with a teacher from St. Louis who has been using our platform in her classroom. She’s taking her students and their stories to South America. I thought this was wild, and it really opened my eyes to the type of impact we can have.

Is Moglue 100% composed of independent user created books or do you also “import” any classics? Are all of your books free or are some priced?

We’ve done some internal projects using material from the public domain, but we’re primarily focusing on educating people about our platform, learning from our users, and taking this feedback to develop tools that really serve their needs. Because we are still in beta mode, currently all of the books are available for free. In due time users will be allowed to set their own prices.

Do you think your application can be a starting point for writers-to-be?

Most definitely. I like to draw parallels between what we’re doing, and what happened in the music industry during 80s and 90s. The digital music revolution has drastically reduced the price of participation. This has allowed many more people the opportunity to explore an area that had previously been cost prohibitive. I see what we’re doing as a similar democratization of the space in which we operate. What is your favorite book in Moglue right now? Hah! That is a tricky question, for a variety of reasons… I like each book in its own special way. Moglue is like a child to me, how could I choose a favorite grandchild?

How has being in the Asian market played a role in Moglue’s life?

I think it’s helpful in the sense that it gives us a different story to tell. Second, our development team is in Korea, which has some benefits, but also has given us some challenges. Third, I love NY, but the energy in places like Seoul and Beijing is amazing, so that’s helped as well.   

What are you planning when it comes to Marketing? How do you plan to get as known as all other “touchscreen” apps?

I’m a huge fan of Steve Blank and his book ‘The Four Steps to the Epiphany.’ The guy’s a genius. What I particularly love about him is this idea of customer development. Titles like ‘sales’ and ‘marketing’ assume that all we have to do is drop in a sales person, and revenue will go up by ‘x’ amount. Customer development, on the other hand, says we’re still not sure who our customers and markets are.

We have a product that we’re pretty sure people want, but it’s in an emerging market. The publishing industry is upside-down, and many publishers are still testing the water. Instead of only thinking about sales and marketing I prefer to think about building relationships with our users. We need to focus on listening to them, and correctly interpreting their needs. We must pay careful attention, and focus on creating a product that solves their problems. If we do this well; build something great; reach out to and build bonds with the right people; and time these activities properly, the rest will take care of itself.

What are your expectations in the long run?

I personally like to think that ‘Why’ behind Moglue, is to help people share their stories. Further down the road, this could evolve into ‘helping people express their creativity.’ This ‘Why’ is absolutely vital, and should be the starting point for anyone looking to do a startup.

The ‘How’ to this ‘Why’ is by helping people create and share interactive content. The ‘What’ is the implementation, which at the moment is our builder and MoglueBooks. Using that paradigm, when I imagine ‘success,’ I like to picture a child with their mom and dad, thrilled and engrossed in a story. That’s what we’re doing. That’s our guiding star.