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Written by: AuthorsSchool

Category: NFT Blog

Published: 30 May 2023

Hits: 90

Over the past year, I've written several articles discussing the potential additional income that authors can earn through NFTs. However, it seems that many authors believe this doesn't apply to them, leading them to ignore the buzz surrounding NFTs.

After conversing with others in the publishing industry, it has become evident that NFT and Blockchain technology are poised to bring about the next major transformation in the publishing world. Unfortunately, as is often the case, indie authors and small to medium-sized presses are likely to be left in the dark, scrambling to catch up.

At present, authors have ceded too much control over their eBooks and their reading experience to Amazon through the KDP program. People are always looking for ways to save money, and subscribing to Amazon Prime is seen as a means to access new books without paying for them directly, despite the $120 cost of Prime itself. Many authors have bought into the notion that being on Amazon KDP is essential for making money and reaching readers. However, this belief has been proven wrong for many years, yet it persists and continues to grow as a myth.

As it stands today, Amazon wields considerable control over how much an author can earn through the KDP program. I've voiced my concerns about this in the past, and I want to emphasize again that, on average, authors earn a mere $0.001 per page read. In the grand scheme of things, that's a paltry sum.

Blockchain technology is set to revolutionize this income model in two ways.

Firstly, blockchain will confer ownership rights to electronic books (eBooks and audiobooks), thereby curbing the rampant theft of books that are currently reproduced and sold in other countries without any earnings going to the authors. This will be a significant benefit for authors. However, it's the second aspect of this change that holds the most promise.

Under the current legal framework, individuals can purchase a book, whether in physical or electronic format, and resell or give it away to whomever they choose. However, with blockchain, authors will now be entitled to royalties from every single sale and resale of their electronic books. Gone are the days when Half Price Books could earn more from a sale of your book than you do.

Authors, and even their future generations, will now have the opportunity to earn more money from the initial sale and subsequent resales of their electronic books. It may take another year or even five for this system to be fully established, and companies like Amazon will undoubtedly attempt to find loopholes. Nevertheless, this change is inevitable, and as an author, you must prepare yourself.

Moreover, with the emergence of special NFT eBook releases, authors have even more potential to generate additional income. The world of publishing is continually expanding, presenting new avenues for earning a fair living if you know how to market and sell your books.

The Authors Marketing Event 2023 is scheduled to take place from September 15 to 17, 2023. Will you be attending to learn how you can capitalize on these new opportunities?

Click here to register now for the in-person or virtual event.

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Written by: AuthorsSchool

Category: NFT Blog

Published: 22 May 2023

Hits: 95

Introduction

The world of book publishing is undergoing a significant transformation as emerging technologies continue to revolutionize various industries. One such technology, the non-fungible token (NFT) and its underlying infrastructure, blockchain, is making its mark on the publishing industry. NFTs and blockchain are changing the way books are created, distributed, and monetized, opening up new opportunities for authors, readers, and the publishing ecosystem as a whole.

NFTs: Unleashing the Value of Digital Ownership

NFTs are unique digital assets that can represent ownership or proof of authenticity of a particular item, whether it's artwork, music, or, in this case, books. By leveraging blockchain technology, NFTs provide a decentralized and immutable ledger for recording ownership and transaction history. This novel approach to digital ownership has far-reaching implications for the publishing industry.

1. Ensuring Authenticity and Intellectual Property Rights

NFTs can serve as a powerful tool to combat piracy and protect intellectual property rights. By associating an NFT with a specific book, authors and publishers can establish verifiable ownership and authenticity, reducing the risk of unauthorized duplication or plagiarism. This technology empowers authors to maintain control over their work, leading to increased trust and transparency in the publishing process.

2. Creating Scarcity and Collectibility

NFTs introduce the concept of scarcity to digital content, including books. By minting a limited number of NFTs for a specific edition or version of a book, publishers can create a sense of exclusivity, elevating the perceived value of these digital assets. Collectors and enthusiasts can acquire and trade these limited edition NFT books, fostering a new market for rare literary works and establishing a direct connection between authors and their dedicated readership.

3. Unlocking New Revenue Streams

NFTs enable authors and publishers to monetize their books in innovative ways. With traditional publishing models, authors often receive a one-time advance and royalties based on book sales. However, by leveraging NFTs, authors can sell digital copies directly to readers as unique, blockchain-authenticated assets. This direct-to-reader approach eliminates intermediaries and opens up opportunities for authors to receive more substantial and immediate financial rewards, transforming the economics of publishing.

4. Enabling Micropayments and Tokenization

Blockchain technology facilitates micropayments, allowing readers to pay for specific chapters, sections, or even individual pages of a book. NFTs can be fractionalized, allowing readers to purchase and own a fraction of a book or specific rights associated with it. This tokenization process encourages readers to support their favorite authors and promotes a pay-as-you-go consumption model, revolutionizing how readers engage with books and authors.

5. Enhancing Immersive Reading Experiences

NFTs provide a platform for authors to enhance their books with additional digital content, creating immersive reading experiences. Through the integration of multimedia elements, such as audio, video, animations, or interactive features, authors can enrich their narratives and engage readers in unique and captivating ways. These enhanced NFT books not only expand storytelling possibilities but also attract a wider audience, including younger generations accustomed to multimedia-rich digital experiences.

Conclusion

The emergence of NFTs and blockchain technology is reshaping the publishing landscape, offering new opportunities for authors, readers, and the entire book ecosystem. By leveraging NFTs, authors can assert ownership, protect their intellectual property rights, and forge direct connections with readers. The scarcity and collectibility associated with NFT books create an exciting market for digital literary assets. Moreover, the ability to monetize books through micropayments and tokenization introduces novel revenue streams and enhances the reading experience.

While this transformative shift in book publishing is still in its early stages, it has the potential to democratize the industry, empowering authors, and fostering a deeper connection between creators and readers. As NFTs and blockchain continue to mature, the world of books will undoubtedly undergo further evolution, offering a glimpse into a future where the intersection of technology and literature is more interconnected than ever before.

An example of the way blockchain and books will merge will be in the ability to cut down on the piracy of eBooks and Audiobooks.  With blockchain added and an electronically formatted book, pirates will not be able to easily copy and use the material.  This will help save millions of dollars in lost income for authors.  However, if the indie author or small press author does not adapted to this change quickly, they will continue to have their books stolen and suffer in lost income.

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Written by: AuthorsSchool

Category: NFT Blog

Published: 15 October 2022

Hits: 453

By Thad McIlroy

Book.io’s CEO Josh Stone is a publishing startup veteran, having launched BookShout in 2012 and running it for two years before selling the company to an investor. He went on to build an online learning platform on behalf of two authors. Then, in 2017, Stone began to delve deep into blockchain and cryptocurrencies, leading to this new venture, which he launched in 2022—originally under the name Book Token—with cofounder Ben Illian (who also worked alongside him at BookShout).

Book.io describes itself as “an NFT marketplace for buying, reading, and selling e-books and audiobooks” (though, thus far, it has only published e-books). The blockchain infrastructure enables a broad range of benefits for authors (and by extension publishers), book buyers, and, to a lesser extent, readers. Authors are able to build new revenue streams via limited edition NFTs, and by gaining a percentage of the revenue when their digital work is resold. The blockchain also affords unique ways to build reader communities.

Authors and publishers can take advantage of Book.io’s unique “decentralized encrypted assets,” which create a style of DRM that’s essentially unbreakable. The company is also launching “$BOOK tokens,” a unique cryptocurrency that is earned by readers based solely on the amount read—a way to incentivize readers to become more deeply involved with authors and their work.

Ingram Content Group chairman John Ingram was on the board at BookShout, and that connection eventually led to the company’s investment in this new startup, part of the more than $1.6 million that Book.io has raised. The Ingram investment is tied, in part, to another unique Book.io feature, dubbed Mint & Print—a print-on-demand service for digital books bought on Book.io and delivered via Ingram’s vast international infrastructure. In commenting on the investment, Ingram Content Group president and CEO Shawn Morin said Books.io “naturally aligns with the global reach of our business and our mission to provide the infrastructure and services necessary to help content reach its destination, from content creators to consumers.” Book.io has already published (or, rather, “minted” in the parlance of the world of NFTs) 12 titles, and all have sold out, some in as few as 11 seconds. First up was a replica of the Gutenberg Bible. It was, Stone explained, “an homage to Gutenberg: something monumental to start with—over 800,000 words—with 70 high-resolution images. Every cover was unique.” It was published in mid-July, at an initial price of 180 ADA (the native currency of the Cardano blockchain, currently trading for about 37¢ each); 1,600 copies have been sold. “On the first day we generated $110,000 in sales within 12 hours,” Stone said, adding that the company is already profitable.

The Gutenberg was followed by what Stone calls the “monster series,” including titles like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (49 ADA) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (39 ADA). After the monsters, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, published October 8, was priced at 100 ADA in an edition of 400 copies. These are now available on Jpg.store—which bills itself as “the largest Cardano NFT marketplace”—at prices ranging from 400 ADA to more than 100,000 ADA. Copy #17 has been resold twice, most recently for 1,200 ADA, upward of $500.

To get a better understanding of how this works, let’s follow an author’s path on Book.io. Gina Azzi has written 27 romance novels in a specialized category, “sports romance.” Her upcoming publication on Book.io is titled Hot Shot’s Mistake: A Workplace Hockey Romance, the first in her Tennessee Thunderbolts Hockey Romance series. The Book.io version of Hot Shot’s Mistake will contain the exact same text as the Kindle edition, but it will feature 10 different AI-generated covers, each one, Azzi pointed out, “illustrating a different point in the book that holds special emotional significance.” The book will be minted on October 24, in an edition of 3,000. The pricing will be about 25 ADA.

Now let’s follow the book buyer’s path on Book.io. To purchase a digital book, a consumer needs to first convert some dollars into Cardano blockchain ADA. Cardano is an alternative to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and like those currencies its value has recently taken a nosedive, dropping by more than 80% in the past year, nearly 25% in the past month. It adds an exciting element to the book buying equation. To buy ADA, a person needs to register on a cryptocurrency exchange platform as well as with a “light” wallet vendor that connects to something called dApps. With that done, users can buy a book on Book.io.

Stone said he is committed to simplifying the process for book buyers until it reaches a point where, as he says, his mother can buy and read a book on the company’s digital platform. While he still has some way to go to get his mom onboard, the company’s technical command inspires confidence that the goal can be reached.

Azzi is excited as she prepares her first book launch. “I do think this is going to become much more mainstream,” she said. “It can sound scary. But Book.io does a great job of bridging where we’re currently at with where things are headed.”

A version of this article appeared in the 10/17/2022 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Ingram Backs Book.io

Below is the information for authors to sign up on Book.IO

Author Sign Up

Get started with Book.io

Welcome to the future of publishing. First of all, congrats on your book! As an independent author, we understand you have dreams of getting your books out there and read, and we want to make publishing your work an easy process. We will walk you through the steps to get your books published on the blockchain and up for sale in our store.

Benefits of NFT eBooks

As the Author, you’re in control, here’s what you can expect:

• 70% of all revenue on the initial sale of your books

• You’ll set the Royalty % that you’ll receive on all secondary sales

• You won’t have to be exclusive with Book.io

• The title(s) you want to publish and the number of units

• The number of different covers and the corresponding rarity chart

• The price of your books (we’ll handle the crypto conversion for you)

• Get accurate sales reports pulled directly from an immutable blockchain

• Allow Readers to Print the NFTs they own through Mint & Print® (coming soon)

• Get started today! Just fill out the form below, and a Book.io representative will be in touch.

To sign up go to their website: Book.io - Authors

 

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Written by: AuthorsSchool

Category: NFT Blog

Published: 11 October 2022

Hits: 366

POSTED OCTOBER 29, 2021 VAIBHAV SHARMA

Undoubtedly, we are all connected right now via our phones, computers, and tablet pcs. But, according to experts, the metaverse will evolve more like products, services, and capabilities connect and blend together.

The Metaverse can indeed be thought of as the world’s digital counterpart. Human profiles are represented as avatars, which is indeed an extension of something like the real world. In the Metaverse, office spaces, property, and events are all mirrored.

In the domain of digital transformation, the concept of Metaverse has now become a subject of discussion. Literally, everyone is embracing the Metaverse, from tech giants like Facebook and Microsoft to Roblox and Epic games.

But,

What is Metaverse? And why is it gaining so much popularity these days? Don’t worry; we’ll answer this!

In this blog, we will talk about the trending topic “Metaverse” along

Table of contents:

• Which companies are investing in Metaverse?

• What can you do with Metaverse?

• To Sum Up: What is the future of Metaverse?

• So, let’s get started!

 

What is Metaverse?

In short, it’s a collective virtual shared space.

A few of the beginnings of Metaverse can be seen in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash” from 1992 and in Ernest Cline’s Movie “Ready Player One”.

The metaverse is a perfect fusion of physical, augmented, and virtual reality. The Metaverse is a public virtual world that may be accessed via the internet. It creates a “virtual world” experience by simulating human emotions and gestures.

The metaverse encompasses the entire social and economic structure that exists in both the actual and virtual worlds. Avatars, content, and goods may all travel around freely. It’s a living, breathing experience that never pauses or finishes like a game.

• The Metaverse is a virtual reality in which individuals can communicate and transact with each other and with digital 3D items.

• It relates to collaborative virtual worlds where currency can be used to buy and sell land, buildings, avatars, and even identities.

• Individuals can walk around with their friends, visit places, buy things, and attend events in such environments.

• Musicians, for example, can perform virtual gigs, and fashion companies can create virtual apparel for people’s avatars to wear in metaverse surroundings.

• It’s worth noting that Roblox, a popular children’s game, touts itself as a metaverse corporation.

 

For better understanding, here’s an example!

You could visit a simulated cafe and e-meet with your friends there, or you could travel to a virtual art gallery to see a digital art display.

Metaverses, on the other hand, aren’t just for gamers. Some metaverses allow you to meet up, collaborate, shop for goods and services, and participate in activities like live events, live concerts, among others.

Okay, but,

 

Which Companies Are Investing in Metaverse?

Many technology companies, including Microsoft, Facebook, Roblox, and Epic Games, have been making this a reality.

But how many have they truly achieved thus far?

The early Metaverse experience may be found in gaming, as players create their own distinct worlds. Consider what Epic Games accomplished with Fortnite. They organized complete concerts for people to participate in and connect with.

The metaverse has no bounds. Allowing individuals to imagine endless spaces that aren’t constrained by geography.

Facebook and Microsoft, on either hand, are taking a slightly different strategy.

Horizon Workroom, a new method for office workers to communicate using virtual reality and headsets, was recently unveiled by Facebook. There are Avatars all wandering about in a virtual office area in real-time so that you can hold VR meetings with individuals.

On the other hand, Microsoft plans to completely revolutionize the way business and operations are conducted by creating a digital twin of the real world with which we may engage via mixed reality.

Roblox, a popular game, calls itself a metaverse corporation. Besides Epic games, Fortnite is also regarded as an integral part of the Metaverse.

Over time, The Metaverse has progressed beyond simply a gaming-related experience. Games like Unreal Engine and Fortnite have demonstrated how beneficial this network can be, and it is for this reason, a company like Facebook is ready to put so much money into it.

On the basis of above listed examples and how various tech giants utilize Metaverse, it’s clear that the demand for Metaverse service providers will rise dramatically. But, is Metaverse quite beneficial for individuals like us?

 

Let’s find out!

What Can You Do With Metaverse?

 

With the use of metaverse technology, users can easily wear virtual reality glasses that give the user the sensation of being there in front of a companion, even though they are physically separated and only linked over the internet.

There are no limitations at all. Each individual in the metaverse would have their own digital avatar, which would be our lookalike. We’ll be able to connect with the metaverse through augmented and digital reality, but we’ll also be able to interact with some aspects of it in our physical area.

You could have multiple personalities in the metaverse simultaneously, which you can develop for diverse reasons. You can collect rare things, play instruments, or join a popular sports team as a player. Each of your characters can be made for a certain reason.

 

To Sum up: What is the future of the Metaverse?

Imagine studying, working, interacting, attending concerts, earning money, and playing games in an online realm that is both an extension and a fusion of the real world.

Besides, meetings with clients, digital entertainment, work training, and even online study are all expected to be available online in the future, thanks to the Metaverse. This is why so many businesses are investing in the Metaverse: the network’s ability to change the world is undeniable.

Would you prefer to live in a Metaverse like this? Does it pique your interest? If you like this blog on Metaverse, do share it with others who may find this information useful.

Thanks for reading, and we will see you in the next blog on Metaverse!

For More Information Contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.