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TenPages.com Makes Book Publishing More Accessible But Buyer Beware

February 24, 2010 By 8 Comments

In this post, I’ll discuss TenPages, which I think is a great social platform but presents numerous caveats at the same time.

Description

Last week, Dutch startup TenPages launched. TenPages is a crowdfunding platform that aims to give (aspiring) authors the opportunity to have their book published. Authors can submit a 10-page manuscript that will be publicly listed on the website. To go from manuscript to publication, the author needs to gain the support from the public.

The public can support the author by buying shares of the book. There are 2,000 shares available at a price of €5 per share. All 2,000 shares need to be sold for the book to be published. Once the book is published and put on sale, shareholders also get a slice of the profit pie. Now, there are rules as to the minimum number of shareholders and the maximum amount of shares per person, but I’m not going to bore you with that.

Shareholder ROI Model

Instead, I want to take a look inside the business model. From a social perspective, it’s a great initiative. If a friend of mine submits a manuscript, I’d definitely be willing to help out by becoming a shareholder. However, from a financial perspective, the financial model is very unfavorable to shareholders.

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Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

The World Is Changing

January 14, 2007 By

As we enter 2007, an increasingly important trend to watch is that of personal technology. Fueled by the proliferation of Web 2.0, personal technology will be able to offer people connected to the Web to do more.

The main areas that will boast great growth are:

  • Communication Tools: More tools will become available that allow people to connect and communicate with each other. Communication will transcend the boundaries of time and space (location).
  • Publishing Tools: Blogging has been around for a long time but more scalable options will be offered to meet the desires of people. New platforms will be created that will act as hubs of publishing ecosystems.
  • Multimedia Tools: We’re moving beyond the distribution of text and images. Through podcasts and vodcasts, people will be enabled to share more through audio and video.
  • Administrative Tools: New applications will be developed where people can keep track of things like their personal finances, their bookmarks, their contacts (address book) and much more.
  • Knowledge / Discovery Tools: Obviously, search engines and Wikis already exist, but this area will move in two directions. The first is toward more aggregation. People will be able to find more information through one tool/source. RSS has been a first step but there’s room for more aggregators and mashups. The other direction is toward specialization. Specific tools will be available for people to learn/discover more about a certain niche.

Be prepared and think ahead of the Bass curve. Familiarize yourself with new concepts and know when/if you’re ready to apply them effectively.

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: , , , , ,