Publica Author Development Report, Issue #1.
Today marks the end of Publica’s first week officially in business, as determined by the issuance of Pebbles (PBL tokens) to our contributors. I don’t promise weekly reports! But it’s a great pleasure to write the first one.
About the numbers — Remember this is Day One. This is where we measure from.
I predict that a year from now, Publica will be a topic on most of the author forums around the world. I suspect that most of the conversations will include some version of “Hey, everybody’s talking about crypto money, do you know how I can earn some with my books?”
There’s going to be a dozen million authors using Publica, but right now I’m focused on developing the first dozen. Our community managers will take good care of the dozen million authors to come.
The first dozen deserve all the time I can give them, and there’s only one of me. Here’s what I can tell you about the first four, by the numbers. If four seems like a small number, please remember this is only Week #1. So each of those four authors represents 25% of the total.
50% write fiction, 50% write nonfiction.
100% know who their readers are, and consider them a community that will back them on Publica. Exactly as described by Jia Wertz in yesterday’s Forbes article about brands doing better with authentic consumer engagement.
25% asked for help from Publica’s community of PBL owners (we call them the Publicans) to publicize their book. (No problem there! Publicans are quite vocal on social media and they’re passionate about Publica.)
75% are established authors with good knowledge of who their readers are. 25% know who their readers will be but haven’t written their book yet.
0% have crowdfunding experience.
50% are first-time book authors, well-known and established medium-length authors in their own field and confident their book will sell, so they don’t see a point in sharing a lot of money with anyone who isn’t at least partially responsible for their book’s demand.
25% have a brilliant idea of their own for how to use their book’s Publica READ Tokens in their business. Meaning, a business model they can’t do at all on traditional DRM-and-EULA platforms.
25% own their own self-publishing business.
25% teach other authors how to self-publish.
100% have their own marketing and publicity operations.
75% have their own marketing and publicity operations that serve their non-book business. They intend to leverage those operations in promoting their book.
100% have experience with traditional sales channels, plan to go with Publica first, then talk to other sales channels with their Publica community numbers in hand.
50% found Publica because I called them. 50% found Publica by word of mouth from their own community.
100% have a community that spans at least four nations.
100% write in English. 50% have sold translation rights to a different entity than their English-language publisher.
75% own some crypto money. 25% know about crypto money from the media but don’t have any yet.
100% don’t want to be like everybody else.
That’s a great start for Week #1. It’s why I’m so focused on the first dozen. Publica needs to understand what authors want, the pain points we can soothe, and how we fit in their workflows.
Publica is developing the author’s journey right now. If you’re an author or just want to keep an eye on the latest developments, click here.
