As an independent creator, smart contracts and blockchain technology have really piqued my interest. Using traditional distribution models via retailers like Amazon, there are an overabundance of middle men involved in attempting to release anything you've created to a wide audience, which costs creators big. Therefore, the prospect of cutting that down to few or no intermediaries is an attractive one!
So far, I haven't been able to find very many existing options for selling a book on blockchain, but I did find some, which I will share with you, as well as my experiences with them so far. If you want to support me, please consider purchasing a copy of my book at one of the links below, or here. Great ebook for kids, and imaginative adults!
SELF-PUBLISHING OPTION 1: BOOKCHAIN
Bookchain is a Canada-based site where you can publish ebooks to their catalog by setting up a smart contract for your book for a one-time fee of $39.00 USD. There are no options for selling printed books. Customers are able to pay by credit card, making it easy for the average person to buy, but unfortunately there are no options to pay with cryptocurrency or even PayPal yet, as far as I can see.
As of today, their catalog only features about 2,400 titles, giving any author an easier chance of being discovered on this site, should someone arrive to browse.
As a customer, books in the catalog can be broadly sorted by genre, though the search feature is not robust, and leaves more to be desired. The home page emphasizes publishing your book, instead of discovering/buying new books, which doesn't encourage customers to read books so much as publishers to sign up for Bookchain. Understandable, since publisher fees are likely bigger earners for Bookchain than royalties from book sales, but without customers, will publishers return? It just doesn't look like an inviting book store; it looks mechanical. An option to rate/review is missing as well.
Ideally, I would like to see more sorting options to make books easier for prospective readers to find based on their interests. I emailed Bookchain about this and was told we "should see some improvements coming in the next few months." I am optimistic based on the replies I received, which came back relatively quickly.
As a seller, you are able to set the price of your ebook yourself. From each sale, $0.42 will be taken as an application fee, and $0.30 + 0.0249% (of transaction) is taken for a transaction fee. That means if you sell your book for let's say $10, you will earn ~$9.28 per sale. This is really the best feature of using Bookchain because this pay structure is far more generous to the self-publisher than any of the mainline self-publishing options like Amazon, Ingramspark, etc.
I set my book up on Bookchain here for $8.99 ($11.43 CAD), the same price it currently sells for on Apple, Kobo, etc. via Ingramspark. If someone purchases my book through any of those retailers, I receive (in theory) ~$3.60. Using Bookchain, I receive (in theory) ~$8.27. Quite a big difference!
If Bookchain can draw more customers in, provide a more robust interface to sort through their catalog with, and considers expanding payment options, I think this could become a real boon for independents and self-publishers.
Bookchain is owned by Scenarex.
SELF-PUBLISHING OPTION 2: PUBLICA
Publica is a Gibraltar-based site where you can publish ebooks to their catalog by tokenizing your book as an NFT collectible. There are no options for selling print books. Tokenized books are sold in Publica's native currency, "Pebbles" (PBL), so customers must have a MetaMask wallet set up to buy, making it a bit more restrictive for someone not familiar with crypto currencies and wallets, but perhaps ideal for those who are.
As a seller, you are able to set the price of your ebook, and you must also set the length and quantity of availability for each title as well. In the exact same way, you are also able to use Publica to tokenize supplementary materials for your book as collectibles, things such as artwork, special editions, promos, or whatever you can come up with, with everything functioning as NFTs do.
The catalog of books on Publica is even smaller than Bookchain's. I can't find an exact count but there doesn't appear to be very many more than 100 different titles as of now, so even more potential exists to be discovered on this site. The fact that books on Publica can be released with limited availability will naturally contribute to this, but since I have seen the same titles available for several months now, I also think this site is just not being used much yet, and new ICO campaigns are disabled at the time of publishing this blog.
Unfortunately, the number of steps required to integrate into this network will be too much for many. Besides needing a Metamask wallet and PBL to purchase titles, customers also must download the Publica ebook reader app. If you are a Hive or Steemit user, you surely know how inhibitive these things can be in drawing in new people!
There are no fees to publish your book here, but Publica takes 10% of each sale. Using my example of a price tag of $8.99, I receive $8.09 from each sale, slightly less than on Bookchain, but still miles better than other alternatives. (Unless of course, gas fees sabotage your efforts...)
All in all, there is a lot of opportunity to do many cool things with Publica, but until there is wider adoption of much of the technology used here, there are limits to who it will reach.
I have not placed anything on Publica yet, but I would like to try it out. I have been interested in turning artwork from my book into NFTs, and this is an interesting model to consider alongside the books themselves.
OTHER OPTIONS??
Sadly, that's it! Bookchain and Publica are really your only two options right now for self-publishing on blockchain, and neither is in a particularly dazzling state yet, nor offers any way to sell physical books.
Bookchain is much more accessible and easy to use and understand, but it's still a very bare-bones site overall. Publica offers a much more interesting and forward-thinking option for the self-publisher, but it may yet be too ahead of its time, and it doesn't seem as actively tended to as Bookchain is. I can't find any updates on any of Publica's pages in the last 4 months, for instance. Nonetheless, everything has to start somewhere. Whether Bookchain, Publica, or any future contenders will ever really take off is yet to be seen, but the technology and payout structures represent incredibly valuable possibilities for self-publishers and readers alike that I am excited for. And who knows, perhaps someone reading this will be the one to have the next great idea!
What do you guys think? Do you use either of these sites for books? If not, what would it take to get you to start? Do you know of any sites I missed? Did I get anything wrong? Any other thoughts? Let me know!
(Please note: I have no official affiliation with any of the companies mentioned here and I can't guarantee everything here will be 100% accurate at the time you read this, so be sure to do your own homework as well!)
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