Jason Illian

In the midst of an industry shift towards direct-to-consumer sales, stronger publisher brands, and deeper reader relationships, BookShout! is uniquely poised to assist publishers as they evolve into consumer-facing companies. The direct-to-consumer ebook platform helps over 2,000 publishers and authors sell their books direct across a variety of devices and channels and tracks valuable readership data after the sale. Following founder and CEO Jason Illian explains what makes BookShout! stand out in a market saturated with ecommerce solutions.

Dallas-based startup BookShout, which aims to promote social reading and aid book discovery, has raised $6 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Thursday. But the company is, at least temporarily, no longer permitting users to import their Kindle and Nook books onto the platform — the feature that it showed off as the main perk of its platform at the Frankfurt Book Fair last fall.

That hasn’t stopped Ambassador Enterprises, a Fort Wayne, Ind.-based venture firm, from investing again. “By serving authors and publishers in a process-oriented