A Better Bookstore, Part 1
What will make Publica a better bookstore?
Bookstores have various goals and business models. Comparisons can be tricky. There are commonalities, of course.
Most bookstores run a classic Web-ecommerce model. Some offer mobile apps. Publica also takes full advantage of the Web and mobile apps. Then it adds the latest new powers of digital wallets and blockchain technology.
Let’s remember what online bookstores first offered as a better bookstore compared to the bricks-and-mortar bookstores.
Search from home, work, or away from home. Without talking to strangers about it.
More titles than a traditional bookstore can stock.
Convenient delivery to home, work, friends, and relatives, in many places.
A lenient returns policy.
Your buying history, and recommendations based on it.
A new market for independent booksellers and self-publishers.
Discounts, thanks to their lower cost of operations.
In short, better price and convenience for readers. Better market reach for authors and booksellers.
At first glance, Publica may not look like a better bookstore compared to what you’re used to. But that really depends on what you want from a better bookstore.
Search and recommendation
Most recommendation models rely on your buying history, other people’s reviews (with inherent problems but getting better thanks to machine learning), paid-for promotions, plus the site’s own lists, recommendations, and promotions.
Many include non-book items that distract readers’ money away from books, affecting histories, promotions, and recommendations.
Publica’s recommendation model is simple and effective in its own way.
Word search, of course. Plus natural language processing (also a machine learning technology) that tells you what’s inside the book. And what’s inside other books that resemble it, analyzed from the books’ contents.
No system to play games with. No complications, just books and what’s inside them.
You can get reviews, popularity rankings, and recommendations from the people, places, and apps that you trust the most, on your own. You can cast your own net better and wider than any one retailer. Publica’s bookstore can use your trusted sources to help you navigate to what you want. And in today’s climate of privacy concerns, Publica won’t collect your information to share with anyone.
Payments (global)
Traditional online bookstores accept credit cards and PayPal. Publica’s bookstore will too, in any currency, from any buyer anywhere in the world. Publica’s bookstore also accepts cryptocurrencies, and they’re becoming more popular every day. That makes a better bookstore for readers, authors, and booksellers.
Delivery (and ownership)
Publica’s bookstore delivers ebooks to and from anywhere, to and from anyone. Globally, without borders. Downloading is the same, via the Internet. Reading is the same, on your device.
But this is new: Publica’s bookstore introduces real digital book ownership. Book tokens aren’t locked by any third party like a phone or a retailer’s platform subscription. They’re in your wallet and they’re yours to keep, give, lend, export/import, or even resell. On any devices you have or may buy, wherever you are, whenever you want.
This means you won’t need to buy a book again for a new device or platform. For many people, that’s a much better bookstore. Read on for how digital book ownership can benefit authors and booksellers too.
Ereaders and e-libraries
All modern devices can be ereaders and e-libraries.
Publica’s bookstore offers an ereader-wallet-library app for iOS, Android, and Web browser.
Publica’s book token ownership makes yours a better e-library. Your Publica ereader-wallet full of your book tokens is portable to any other device you own.
No lock-in to any phone, tablet, operating system, or subscription service, ever. To many people, that’s a much better e-library.
Will Publica make a dedicated hardware ereader device? That depends on if there’s demand for it. Let’s first find out if the existing ereader device brands will let Publica’s bookstore in. Locking out Publica to lock in you and your books will be up to them. Publica’s philosophy is openness, and our software is open source. To many people, that’s a better bookstore.
New markets
Publica’s bookstore is open to people in all nations without borders. It will accept all currencies including cryptocurrencies, thereby expanding all markets.
Publica’s Initial Book Offerings (IBOs, or book launches) offer new freedom in sales, pre-orders, prices, editions, crowdfunding, collaboration, bulk sales, and most everything that independent self-publishing authors and their booksellers want for their own business models so they can serve their readers better.
Better books
Publica’s book launching model fuels better books. Some IBO’s will tell you they’re raising funds to pay for highest-quality production in things like illustrations, editors, copyrighted inserts they have to pay for, and so on. Some IBO’s will test their market to find out how much they can afford to spend on production quality.
And to many people, better books means books they can’t buy elsewhere. Like graphic novels that cost too much to host or download in other bookstores’ pricing structure.
Free markets (no intermediary)
Publica’s bookstore isn’t a direct seller trying to maximize its own profits; it’s an automated platform that only earns a fee for transactions through it. Publica’s bookstore can’t dictate territories, prices, margins, profits, advertising, or marketing. It can’t bind authors to restrictions or exclusivity. It can’t de-list a book or delete book tokens once they’re in a buyer’s wallet.
Authors, booksellers, and their readers can enjoy a free marketplace. It’s a transparent marketplace for primary, secondary, and premium book markets, for independent publishers and booksellers alike. They can even ask for part of the revenue when their readers resell their books for them. From all three perspectives, that’s a better bookstore.
Secondary markets (resales)
For ebooks, there wasn’t any secondary market before. Publica’s book tokens can fuel secondary markets to benefit authors, rightsholders, booksellers, and readers.
Ebooks don’t degrade like used paper books, they’re always new and exactly what the author published. Some people prefer used paper books because they’re cheap. Many people prefer ebooks for their valuable features like font resizing, links, search, etc.
Authors could resell their own tokens, especially if they can command a higher price as the book becomes better known or popular. Or let their rightsholding booksellers do that. They could trade book tokens for paper books, used or new, sort of like a trade-in discount. These are ideas they can try out, improve upon, and use to engage their readers with market innovations.
Premium markets
First editions, limited editions, special editions, and signed books command premium prices.
Publica’s bookstore adds digital books to premium markets. Supported by a blockchain that verifies authenticity and uniqueness, and their transfer of ownership.
Premium markets aren’t for everybody but they’re important to some.
Discounts (and prices)
Publica needs only a platform maintenance fee for transactions, so authors and booksellers can afford deeper discounts to their faithful readers.
In Publica’s Initial Book Offerings (book launches that can last for weeks or months), authors and booksellers can spur readership by offering discounts when they think the time is right.
Mass retailers lowering prices industry-wide makes all books seem like a cheap commodity, affecting books that can and should earn better, while making books meant for commodity pricing compete with books that can command higher prices. Prices and discounts become indistinguishable, frustrating, and confusing.
In Publica’s bookstore, discounts and prices are up to the sellers and buyers in a free and interactive marketplace. Clear, transparent, easy to understand, appropriate to the book, the author, the bookseller.
Publica is aware that it’s unlikely to attract the cheapest books, and that’s OK. There are cheap bookstores already, and a race to the bottom of price wars doesn’t help readers, authors, or booksellers. It just leads to free books. In this digital age, bookstores for free stuff makes little sense. Rather, free stuff leads readers to better bookstores offering what they want to pay for.
Returns (relationships)
Book tokens can’t be returned to Publica. Authors and booksellers can take them back for refunds; just ask. They love to hear from you — you bought the book from them. Books are enjoyed more, and worth more, as a relationship rather than an anonymous commodity.
Purchase and sales history (and one less intermediary)
Publica records book transactions on the blockchain. Your books show in the app. Private to you.
Authors and booksellers don’t have to rely on Publica’s records. Their sales records are transparent, timely, and accurate, on the blockchain. Nor do their readers have to give out their personal information to buy a book. Relationships between authors, booksellers, and readers belong between them. If, when, and how they choose to make them. Relationships with Publica are separate, their own business, and many people prefer that.
Audiobooks (and VR, AR, etc.)
Not yet, Publica is new. Audiobooks and other future book media are digital too, so everything that applies to ebooks, portable e-libraries, and book token ownership applies to our app’s future support for them.
Paper books (new and used)
Publica’s bookstore sells ebooks. Their tokens are like receipts in your wallet. Analogous to a movie ticket or an airline boarding pass, which are tokens too. They’re valuable in themselves for what they represent.
There are plenty of book printers already. Not yet, but eventually, Publica ebook tokens will serve as something people can exchange for paper books. Printers, authors, and booksellers can buy them and resell them now if they want to. Publica’s bookstore will encourage that marketplace with its token exchange.
Titles (inventory)
Publica’s bookstore is new and doesn’t yet offer the latest bestsellers and millions of other titles to choose from. That will change because of what Publica’s platform offers to bestselling authors and to booksellers who have thousands or millions of titles in their inventory.
Publica’s cost of operations is low, so authors and booksellers keep 90% of their revenue and can set their prices accordingly. Transactions can be trusted anywhere, by anyone, without the costs and inconveniences of establishing a trust relationship (and lawyers). That lowers their costs too.
There’s no barrier to them taking advantage of Publica’s new bookstore.
Bestsellers (transparency)
Bestseller-dom depends on who you ask and how they decide it. It’s not as simple as it may appear. See Putting My Foot Down.
Bestsellers in what market? Publica isn’t the last word. What single bookstore should be? The Internet, search engines, and social media can do a better job.
Publica’s bookstore records sales on the blockchain. Blockchains are transparent and reliable; that’s what they were invented for. Publica’s is the first Blockchain Bestsellers List. Read the interesting story about The Token Heard Around The World.
Control and Dignity
Book tokens are always in the control of their owners. They’re in private wallets. Authors and booksellers control them when they tell Publica to make them. Readers and buyers control them when their payment goes to the seller’s wallet. There’s an inherent dignity in that relationship.
To Sum Up —
The price and convenience we’re used to, plus trust and transparency, global sales in fiat and cryptocurrencies, in more and freer markets, in more and better business models, for better books and services to readers — these will make Publica a better bookstore.
Not necessarily the best-possible-bookstore for anyone-ever. No single bookstore is or could be. It depends on who you are and what you want.
In comparison to familiar bookstores, Publica’s is the only better-bookstore of its kind. What a great way to launch a new bookstore.
If you’re an author or bookseller interested in learning more, write to info ‘at’ publica.com or go to https://publica.com and get a newsletter.
If you’re a reader and want the app, it’s coming soon to your app store. Follow our announcements on Medium or join the conversations on social media.
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