Denis Papathanasiou

Just over a year ago, I was working on a new marketplace for ebooks, mostly because independent authors were being under-served by Amazon and Apple’s iBookstore.

They still are, actually, but every author I came into contact with really, really wanted to see their work sold there.

As one author put it to me, “If it’s not in iTunes, it’s not real.”

So the site struggled to get content, and without that, it didn’t attract any readers, either.

Listening to Clients

The problem (in my mind, anyway) was that the site’s clients (i.e., the authors) were asking for something that didn’t fit into my preconceived notions of what the marketplace should be:

“Can you get my book in Amazon?”
“Why did Apple reject my book?”
“Do you have connections to Amazon and iTunes?”
“Can you help me format my book?”

Eventually, though, those messages did manage to reach into my brain, and I realized something important.

People want to sell on Amazon and iTunes, but they don’t have the technical know-how to do it.

Both Amazon and iTunes require authors to submit epub files that pass validation.

Since, however, the people who wrote the epub spec insisted on going with a uncompromisingly strict approach, it created a situation where producing an epub file is easy, but getting it to validate was hard.

Mutation #1: eBookBurn.com

So while the original marketplace didn’t survive, it demonstrated a problem that needed a solution.

That led me to build a different type of site, one where authors could create valid ebooks without knowing how to program.

As I’ve written before, it’s not only popular with users, but also generates revenue.

Those Pesky Off-Topic Requests

But once again, I started getting a stream of suggestions that went against my neat worldview of what eBookBurn.com was supposed to be.

This time, it was a variation of “Can you help me sell my book?”

Unlike before, though, I didn’t have a clear vision of how I could help, or even if I could (and it’s not a problem for just independent writers: mainstream authors and established publishing companies struggle with this as well).

One author who has solved this problem is Amanda Hocking.

She admits to being baffled about why she succeeds while other, similar authors fail, and suggests a combination of “good covers” with “similar [cheap] prices”.

But Amanda’s books stand out to me for a different reason: her books have hundreds of reviews on Amazon, in stark contrast to other ebook-only titles.

And she has a strong presence on both Twitter and Facebook.

So would it be possible to mobilize people to read, review, and tweet about a given book?

Mutation #2: BookHunch.com

Enter BookHunch.com, which I recently opened to a small set of beta users.

The basic premise is that authors and publishers submit new or pre-release books to a community of book lovers, who in turn read, review, and share their opinions.

Readers get points for participation, which determine their level of access.

Points mean privileges, including special access to content, and, eventually real-world rewards in the form of gift cards or donations to favorite charities.

And all reading is social: readers can invite their friends, with whom they can make and share notes about the book, right alongside the text.

It’s also possible just to read the book and ignore all the community aspects of the site, so even digital hermits are welcome.

On the other side, authors and publishers not only get social media exposure and explicit feedback, but also analytical reports of readers’ implicit behavior: how many pages people read, where they stopped reading, how long they took on a particular chapter, etc.

And implicit behavior is interesting, in that it probably has more to tell an author than all the written reviews and notes do.

As this notable study of netflix habits shows, people tend to claim that they want to watch highbrow films, but when it comes to choosing what to watch right now, they usually wind up with something less refined.

More likely to survive and reproduce?

The initial response for invite requests has been encouraging, and I’ve already gotten some useful suggestions.

Here’s a preview article on the Digital Reader blog.

 

When I started eBookBurn.com, I was unsure of the pricing model, but I was definitely determined to charge money for it.

Ebook conversion “consultants”, part of a cottage industry that has developed recently, take an author’s source material, spend several days or weeks hacking it into an acceptable (or in some cases unacceptable) digital file, and charge several hundred dollars.

So in that context, I started with a time-based scheme: one day of using the editor cost $25, one week cost $150, and so on.

My reasoning was: if an author already had their source file ready, copying chapters into the editor and making minor edits would take no more than a few days, the resulting files would read well, and it would cost just a fraction of hiring a consultant.

Unfortunately, people have come to expect that web apps should be free or at least “freemium”, and so my pricing generated some complaints.

Since I got no traction, I tried keeping the basic concept, but lowering prices.

That improved things a little, as I started to see some paying users, but the ratio of people who started to sign up versus those who actually paid and continued was disappointing.

So I tried offering three days free to every new account, and that worked, at least in converting visitors to registered users.

I saw a big jump in my log activity, and several new ebooks were being generated by different authors every day.

However, as before, very few of those users actually paid to continue once the free period was over, and many simply re-registered with a different email address.

It was frustrating, since traffic was high, and based on the number of new registrants I was getting, I knew this service filled a need.

Start Over

I got some unexpected help from a sales rep from a “deal of the day” site (i.e., an AppSumo clone).

She was interested in it, but wanted to come up with something that she could package and sell on their site.

I got her to sign up, and walked her through the basics of creating an ebook, which she got right away.

After a while, she said, “Why don’t you let people sign up for free, let them use the editor as long as they want, but when it comes time to actually burn* the book, charge them a flat fee?”

Eureka!

*Unlike most people who asked about the name, she immediately understood that the “burn” in “eBookBurn” was analogous to “burning” a CD or DVD, without my having to explain it first

The Benefits of Paying Users

A few days after I announced the change in policy, the site had already generated more revenue than in the prior month.

Even better than the boost in revenue was the increased feedback.

When people pay for something and do not like the result, they complain (i.e., unlike people who try something for free and simply shrug when something goes wrong).

Those complaints led me to fix several issues that I hadn’t seen or anticipated before, and it made the service even better.

Perhaps best of all were some of the emails I got back from users when I solved them:

You guys are awesome.

Let me just say that you rock!

So, yeah, thanks.

That is a PERFECT way to deal with the problem.

Now I will add the remaining chapters and finish the book.

Great!

Thanks!

It’s amazing how a few emails like that can keep you going.

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UPDATE, January 6, 2011:
I’ve created an online web service for non-programmers called eBookBurn.com. It’s a WYSIWYG editor, and there’s a longer, more detailed post about it here.

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It was nice to be at BarCampNYC5 today. I presented a talk on e-book creation in the morning, and I was fortunate to have a great audience with good questions.

The presentation touched on the following topics:

• “Build a digital book with EPUB” — a programming tutorial, for those familiar with generating XHTML and XML

• Sigil — a free and open source WYSIWYG e-book editor

• Calibre — a free and open source e-book library app which can handle format conversions and device syncing

• Fifobooks.com — an e-book marketplace created by my NYC-based startup

The full slide deck can be downloaded here.

E Ink was one of those companies easy to miss during the Net Boom ten years ago.

While they got some press at the time, their product was too far off into the future to interest the lemmings buying stock in online dog food delivery companies.

In 2004, Sony used the E Ink technology to build an ebook reader called the LIBRIé.

The business model was similar to the DIVX rental format for DVDs which bombed so badly in this country: Sony and a consortium of Japanese publishers would let consumers “buy” books which were set to expire and become unreadable after 60 days.

It wasn’t long before hackers figured out how to disable the DRM, and if you were willing to do a bit of scripting, you could load and read all the books you wanted.

Amazon was paying attention, and it released the Kindle in 2007.

Unlike Sony, Amazon let you keep the book once you bought it, though they also use DRM, and occasionally upset their customers by removing paid-for ebooks.

Barnes & Noble jumped in with the Nook late last year, and there are more than 100 different ebook reader devices set to go on sale this year.

While most of the focus was on devices, we thought the real opportunity was in content, since the technology is now in place to allow anyone to publish, on any topic they choose, unleashing Long Tail effects.

The current market for home-brewed pdf books is similar to what the home-brewed software market used to be like, when independent developers would post their programs (shareware and crippleware) to download sites.

Few made any money, and from a consumer’s point of view, it was hard to know what was good and worth paying for.

That changed (at least in the mobile apps market) with the iPhone AppStore: there was now a central marketplace, which could be searched by popularity or reputation (reviews by other users), which made installing independent developer apps easy, and provided a way for developers to get paid.

We think the ebooks market is ready for a similar transformation.

Best observation I’ve read in a while:

So why do I feel uneasy? Because two companies who are in the business of pushing books have come up with nearly identical solutions [Amazon with the Kindle, Barnes and Noble with the Nook]… feels like the mp3 player market before Apple introduced the iPod… feels like the smart phone market before Apple introduced the iPhone. The companies who thought they were “in the business of _______” developed digital means to push their content or solve problems. Then Apple showed those companies that they had wasted a lot of money to come up with a solution to the wrong problem, that they had designed (or not designed) a solution to a problem that either didn’t exists or only existed because they created it. Apple rethought the “problem” to render a completely different solution.

— “jamesmcintyre” (read the whole thing here)

Of course, someone may beat Apple to the punch this time…

Friends have been asking why NYC*Fun isn’t in the list of NYC BigApps entries anymore.

The reason?

I decided to charge a modest fee ($1.99) for it in the AppStore.

The contest rules are not clear on that point, since they talk about being allowed to sell the app “elsewhere”, even during the contest period.

So I interpreted the AppStore as elsewhere, and I was planning to issue promotion codes for the judges so they could get the app for free, to evaluate for the contest.

Charging for it was primarily a hedge against not winning, and secondarily as a way of recouping some of the time and effort that went into making NYC*Fun (though on both counts, I wasn’t expecting to make a profit).

But, alas, the contest organizers felt that was unfair to “all New Yorkers, whose tax payer dollars were used [to make the NYC.gov Data Mine available]“.

That logic seems odd when it comes to iPhone apps in this contest.

If I am a tax-paying New Yorker without an iPhone, all I would have are contest videos of all the iPhone apps.

That’s hardly a way of providing me benefits in return for my tax dollars.

But beyond this single app in this single contest (and perhaps legally, the contest rep was correct in that I could not charge for it in the AppStore and still be eligible), the experience struck a chord because of another phenomenon I’ve been witnessing on a broader scale recently: the devaluation of software as a paid profession.

The undercurrent of my conversation with the contest rep was this: the City’s effort (i.e., time and money spent to provide the data) was more important than mine, even though most of information in the Data Mine is unusable without significant rework (reformatting, normalizing, and the like).

That’s a rant for a different day, though.

This episode did remind of my days in design engineering, and why contests in that world generate little enthusiasm.

The principals of the firm I worked for scoffed at the idea of entering contests, dismissing them as run by cheapskate clients who wanted free work.

The subsequent leverage those clients had with the contest “winners” was also significant, since the tacit threat of bringing in the runner-up firm was always there for the length of the engagement.

Perhaps the smartest people in all this are those who run Challenge Post, the private company hired by the City of New York to run the contest.

Workstax is now live.

From “Growing a Business” by Paul Hawken:

When your business encounters problems and messes, stay with them. Find something valuable down in the dreck. Work with it until you know that mess so well it will never develop again, until it becomes your friend. One of the greatest errors of much business literature today is its attempt to instill certainty with checklists, must-dos, the “motherhoods”, ten principles, axioms galore, and other assorted truisms.

And:

If I will always have problems, if every business will always have problems, what’s the difference between a good business and a bad one? A good business has interesting problems, a bad business has boring ones. Good management is the art of making the problems so interesting and the solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.