When did blockchains affect books?

Josef Marc
Publica
Published in
2 min readNov 28, 2017

Publica hired a community manager today, the first newhire since our founding. We’re paying him in Ether, a popular blockchain currency. So I guess blockchains just intersected at books and jobs.

There are precedents. (Not counting the many books about blockchains.)

A quiet Google lab experimented this year with ebook formats. Some can read data from blockchains in one way or another. Google is following its mission to organize the world’s information. Not a replacement for Publica’s protocol for decentralized publishing, but interesting nonetheless. Authors love it when Google discovers their books.

The oldest reference I find to books and blockchains in practice is May 2013. James Altucher sold his book “Choose Yourself” only for Bitcoin. He later published it in traditional channels and it became a bestseller. Considering the book’s theme, that blockchain angle helped with publicity.

I spoke to a respected author today. He wants to make Publica’s process a part of his next book because it’s about blockchains and supply chains. And, of course, use the Publica process himself as research.

Orna Ross and Joanna Penn discuss the Alliance For Independent Authors online. In September they talked about ALLi’s campaign called “Blockchain for Books.” I saw the interview live and loved it. Publica is now a certified Partner Member of ALLi.

Check it out because blockchain for books is here. To stay.

https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/blockchain-for-books/

Read about ALLI’s Blockchain For Books campaign:

Watch Orna Ross and Joanna Penn discuss it:

https://youtu.be/biqyWYt83Zo?t=1111

If you’re in London this week, I’m talking about it at FutureBooks:

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.

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Josef Marc
Publica

Blockchain evolution fan. Digital media nerd.