ICOs for Books are now a reality!
It's no secret to any author how tough it can be to gather funding for your book in the modern world of publishing. Whether it's illustrations, printing or professional editing services you need, funding often seems to be a bigger challenge than the creative process itself.
The good news is that the landscape is starting to change, with digital publishing becoming ever more popular and modern technologies continuing to advance.
Crowdfunding on the blockchain
There is a common practice for gathering funding for new projects that try to leverage blockchain technology alongside with cryptocurrencies (“tokenise everything” — as they say). The practice is called and ICO or Initial Coin Offering. The premise is fairly simple — exchange your money for early and lower-priced tokens or coins of the project that you believe in. So in the end result you get something that will be potentially valuable once the project is on its feet and the project can use the funding of its supporters to become a reality!
Publica's BOOK ICOs
You're probably starting to see where we are going with this and you are absolutely correct! What if we do the same for books? What if early supporters could buy access keys to a book ahead of time at a better price and other possible extras and, in doing so, show the author their support?
It is now PROVEN to be possible!
On July 5th the FIRST real use case of running an ICO for a book was made and it worked!
The American best-selling author Matthew “Nomadic Matt” Kepnes' ran a book ICO for his then-upcoming book “Nomadic Matt's Backpacking Guide to Europe” from June 6th to June 20th. To add to the uniqueness and exclusivity of the process only 1000 Book Tokens(or access keys) were available for purchase. All of the Book Tokens were purchased and the ICO ended as a success.
On July 5th the ICO process circle was completed with the supporters not only getting early access to the book, but also a special message from the author — Matthew Kepnes. And adding on top of that the technology behind it allows for the owners of the book to SEND the book to others granting them full access and ownership of that copy as you would with a paperback book!
Hypotheticals
The limited supply of the Special Editions begs for the question what about selling your copy of the book? Surely there is some money to be made off of exclusive items! Well, it's definitely in the stars, and in theory could be done right now with under-the-counter-like sales. Publica’s BOOK token exchange is currently in development, so keep in mind that it will be possible in the future to exchange BOOK tokens purchased on Publica, which for obvious reasons is exciting for both authors and readers.
The Future
Whatever the future holds this marks the first use case of the blockchain technology in such a way and sets a precedent for future authors wanting to publish their books on the blockchain or run an ICO for their upcoming book.
Publica is getting ever-closer to making their vision a reality with many new developments this year including the release of our eReader app that also does double-duty as a cryptocurrency wallet, adding a web-store for books and the Book ICO platform being just a few weeks away from release.
Publica.com is the first publishing platform to use blockchain technology to innovate how books are funded, distributed, bought, and read.
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