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How will you work with authors to make these books? I would wager that most authors don't know HMTL5/CSS3. What would be the incentive for an author to work wi

• marvindanig 11y ago
  > How will you work with authors to make these books? I would wager that most authors don't know HMTL5/CSS3. Great point! So right now there's a great divide between the world of authors and let's say front-end developers. But there is some intersection too and that is where we focus currently. We work closely with new writers (I personally sit with them or collaborate with them over Github) and try to yield their thoughts into telling creatives -- it's a bit different for everyone, depending on the nature of book/individual etc. In the medium term we intend to provide this as a process with which developers and designers can work alongside ordinary writers to help them create bestsellers. As if the book were an app! Part of our strategy is also to provide open source tools (See bookiza[1]) and predesigned templates so that writers can start off quickly and not have to worry about HTML/CSS, or the underlying "tech". They can focus on writing their story instead and leave the "tech people" handle their tech. Obviously, different people have different skills and preferences so we'll see if this evolves into a 'book writing framework' sorts or just a, say, predesigned editing/word processing tool or a set of hard rules that people may or may not always follow. > What would be the incentive for an author to work with you vs. a more traditional publisher? There are quite a few big ones: 1. Number one: The ability to create a winner. Imagine a horror story with a webgl interactive showing blood spilled on a glass table? Eww. Heh, I just made it up but why not! :=) You can add visual explanations[3] to the context, like showing a physics experiment to explain how a pendulum works or showing how projectile motion can become an in-orbit flight around a planet with acceleration etc. -- in your book. It will add life to the context of your story. This simply isn't possible on traditional platforms that are based on artefacts that sit outside of web. In other words, with Bubblin you'll be able to do books that are otherwise impossible to do elsewhere. 2. Second big advantage: 100% Support! Our books work everywhere -- all devices, all OSes, all viewports[3]. They are responsive and scale well. In theory, your book can reach everyone on the web and not just those who are behind similar but closed ecosystems today. 3. Third, it takes about half the time to get the book out. Guaranteed! I encourage you to try Bookiza and see for yourself. Why so? Because HTML and CSS! Compared to writing with an enterprise-y tool like MS Word and then having a bunch of people (editors/friends) back-and-forth it and then converting it to N different ebook formats this one rakes in much less complexity and saves time. We tap into all the advantages of our existing developer toolchain - using git for versioning, ability to collaborate with co-authors on Github, using markdown or haml or just plain text, utilizing rapid manuscript deployments for editions etc. etc. etc. So quite a few advantages in there! 4. Fourth, the readers don't have to wait for a book to download or worry about disk space. Again this is convenience & simplicity of web. There is no botheration of managing files or their compatibility, format or other issues. Portability is simply in-built. I mean, it just works! > How big is this market compared to mostly-text ebooks and print (picture) books? You can always do a text-only book or an images-only magazine on Bubblin. Whatever makes your readers happy! ebooks market size and opportunity is pretty big even if we subsection it into just interesting set of interactive books. I'll be happy to run by some numbers if you want. Feel free to reach me at marvin@bubbl.in :-) [1] http://bookiza.io http://bookiza.io [2] https://vimeo.com/64895205 https://vimeo.com/64895205 [3] https://bubbl.in/support https://bubbl.in/support