Joy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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ebooks2011-05-03 11:51 am
wide_worlds_joy) wrote in ebooks2011-05-03 11:51 am
Kicking around an idea
Inspired by elf's posts on electronic books, I'm thinking seriously about starting a company that will sell ebooks at a very reasonable price, like $3-$5 each, with about 1/3 to 1/2 going to the author. These would be high quality common formats. PDF, TXT, RTF, possibly even HTML, with no DRM on them.
The questions I have are these:
1) do you think this would be a good service?
2) if you had this available would you use it?
3) if you were an author, would you put your books up to be sold this way?
4) Are there any other common and cross-platform formats I need?
5) would you be willing to help convert/proofread books into those formats?
ETA: Okay, obviously I'm not the professional marketer that I think, so let me bore you all some more.
Yes, I would be paying others to do proofreading/editing. No, I would not be publishing unknown works. My idea is to contact some of the authors I know, see if they would be willing to let me have the epub rights to older books of theirs, that their publisher may not be interested in printing more copies of (Mercedes Lackey and her "Diana Tregarde" series spring to mind). The authors retain all rights to their work. ALL this would be doing is providing inexpensive, well formatted versions of those books for reading on e-devices. The author would write the book, it would be published through their normal print publisher. Several years later when the interest has waned, but the author still has their copyrights to it, I would take the book, put it into an e-format such as above (including epub apparently) and provide that to those who want to buy it.
It would be something like the "used book store" where you can get copies of old favorite books and read them again without having to pay $18 for it from Amazon. In that it is using older books, $1 to $3 per book royalties to the author isn't a small amount, considering that currently used books don't generate anything for the author, and all they are doing is sitting on their manuscript.
*I* or my employees would be doing the linking, the formatting for HTML, PDF and other formats, including the pictures and diagrams, converting it between the various formats and making sure that it converted properly. No OCR and throw it into the web, but checking it against the manuscript to make sure.
I would have to hire a programmer to make a kick-ass search engine for the site, but I have someone in mind for that. Cross links, links to other sites and so on would also be done by the company. Promotion as well. Naturally I'd have to have an attorney to help with the legal issues.
I'd like "cheap-ebooks.com" to be more than a fly by night internet bubble dot com. I'd like it to have saying power like YouTube or something similar.
elf's posts on electronic books, I'm thinking seriously about starting a company that will sell ebooks at a very reasonable price, like $3-$5 each, with about 1/3 to 1/2 going to the author. These would be high quality common formats. PDF, TXT, RTF, possibly even HTML, with no DRM on them.The questions I have are these:
1) do you think this would be a good service?
2) if you had this available would you use it?
3) if you were an author, would you put your books up to be sold this way?
4) Are there any other common and cross-platform formats I need?
5) would you be willing to help convert/proofread books into those formats?
ETA: Okay, obviously I'm not the professional marketer that I think, so let me bore you all some more.
Yes, I would be paying others to do proofreading/editing. No, I would not be publishing unknown works. My idea is to contact some of the authors I know, see if they would be willing to let me have the epub rights to older books of theirs, that their publisher may not be interested in printing more copies of (Mercedes Lackey and her "Diana Tregarde" series spring to mind). The authors retain all rights to their work. ALL this would be doing is providing inexpensive, well formatted versions of those books for reading on e-devices. The author would write the book, it would be published through their normal print publisher. Several years later when the interest has waned, but the author still has their copyrights to it, I would take the book, put it into an e-format such as above (including epub apparently) and provide that to those who want to buy it.
It would be something like the "used book store" where you can get copies of old favorite books and read them again without having to pay $18 for it from Amazon. In that it is using older books, $1 to $3 per book royalties to the author isn't a small amount, considering that currently used books don't generate anything for the author, and all they are doing is sitting on their manuscript.
*I* or my employees would be doing the linking, the formatting for HTML, PDF and other formats, including the pictures and diagrams, converting it between the various formats and making sure that it converted properly. No OCR and throw it into the web, but checking it against the manuscript to make sure.
I would have to hire a programmer to make a kick-ass search engine for the site, but I have someone in mind for that. Cross links, links to other sites and so on would also be done by the company. Promotion as well. Naturally I'd have to have an attorney to help with the legal issues.
I'd like "cheap-ebooks.com" to be more than a fly by night internet bubble dot com. I'd like it to have saying power like YouTube or something similar.
no subject
Why would she choose you, an unknown start-up, when she could choose an existing epublishing company that already has a presence and a customer base? Or for that matter, shell out some money to have someone do the e-formatting and website for her and sell the books directly? Or through Amazon?
Lots of authors are indeed seeing the potential of epublishing their backlists. I just don't see what you're going to offer. When you decide to jump into an already-crowded field that has very low barriers to entry, you'd better be well-financed and have a brilliant business plan. What is going to distinguish you from everyone else on the Internet who's trying to sell cheap ebooks?
no subject