Helsinki-based Get Lost has announced the alpha launch of BookID, an AI-driven manuscript analysis tool aimed at helping authors and publishers better position their work in the market by providing insights that have traditionally been accessible only to established publishers. This tool examines uploaded manuscripts using what Get Lost describes as a "purpose-built fiction taxonomy with hundreds of analytically defined sub-genres. " BookID produces reports featuring "emotional pattern analysis, audience personas, recommendations for market positioning, and BISAC category guidance. " "Our tool shifts the balance of power back to the writers, " said cofounder Steve El-Sharawy. "For me, the most exciting aspect of this technology is enabling writers to have maximum creative freedom. " Get Lost was founded by James Cramer, El-Sharawy, Nick Moreno, and Eero Jyske, a team experienced in television, mobile games, data-driven creative production, AI, and audience psychology. Cramer noted that the company has trained the system on literary fiction across numerous subgenres, ranging from romance to Dan Brown-style thrillers. The company emphasized that all manuscript analysis is conducted on its own offline hardware, with manuscripts not being used to train any external AI models. "We work with local models, " Cramer told PW. "We don't use ChatGPT or Claude.

Everything is stored on our own hardware. " Currently focusing on self-published authors, the company highlighted that marketing remains the biggest challenge for independent writers, even though self-publishing is growing more than three times faster than traditional publishing. In 2023, over 2. 6 million books were self-published, and indie authors accounted for more than 40 percent of global ebook sales—nearly $9 billion—according to Cramer's research. "Our goal as a team is simply to help more people discover and read books they love, " Cramer added. "One major obstacle in achieving this is an industry-wide data drought. BookID represents our first step towards resolving that. " Looking ahead, Cramer explained that the company’s longer-term vision involves applying best practices from mobile gaming development—a field in which he has prior experience—to the publishing world. These include automated marketing campaigns and extensive testing of promotional materials through what he calls "burst campaigns, " designed to identify the most effective marketing content before investing heavily in promotion.