14 ms·

Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book

68 points by benwerd 15y ago

Jun8 15y ago
WOW! This has the potential to be really big. Just think about all the cookbooks, children's storybooks, and DIY guides you can create easily with such a tool, if it's done right.
- steverb 15y ago
  I'm getting flashbacks from the heyday of CD-ROM publishing. I suspect the end story will be the same.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    Maybe not. I've already spent $20-30 on iPad audio books for my son, they highlight the words as they are read, he loves them. iPad is his favorite toy, unfortunately, I've found out: I bought him a Stinky the Garbage Truck for $50that he's been talking about and he still wants to play with the iPad. And he's 4!
  - gaius 15y ago
    CD-ROM? I'm getting flashbacks to HyperCard...
  - ugh 15y ago
    CD-ROMs are physical, you have to buy them in a store or order them from somewhere, you have to put them in those huge, bulky computers and sit in front of them. I see few, if any, points of comparison. Magazines and books on tablets might still fail but I fail to see how comparisons to CD-ROM publishing are useful.
lucasjung 15y ago
The internet is already full of self-published crap because self-publishing in digital form is already trivially easy. Making it easier to self-publish is not going to disrupt the publishing industry, because the publishing industry still serves a valuable service: they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories. More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading. If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging).
- Shorel 15y ago
  You can self publish a lot of free and full of ads crap. Self publishing to the App Store seems a good model for professional writers, the diference is a distribution channel you can profit from without ads. This is more a competition to Amazon and Kindle than competition to blogs and wordpress sites.
- muhfuhkuh 15y ago
  "they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories." Wouldn't customers be a better sifter than the publishing industry? Word of mouth and discovery? Samples and free reading demos (like Barnes and Noble does when you go into the store with a Nook)? And, for every published nugget, there are tonnage worth of published muck and runoff polluting the shelves; their filter isn't so great either. "If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging)." The publishing industry is plenty disrupted by the fact that eBooks are now 30% of their entire market in copies sold and is the format with the biggest share (2nd place is mass market paperback). Amazon sells more eBooks than paperback and hardcover. And, an increasing number of self-published authors are finding their way to the top 100 on Kindle and Nook paid eBook charts. Some self-pubbed authors have multiple titles in the Amazon top 100, meaning they sell at least several hundred of each of their titles per day. As far as developing professional writer skills, you're ready for the business the minute you've made a sale and perhaps a fan. The idea of the minimum viable product (MVP) in the professional writer's world is akin to the dime novel or "penny dreadfuls" of yesteryear, where some of the greatest genre writers (Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft) started their craft with generally bad writing. Believe me, nothing says "welcome to reality" like getting a godawful review or even a return (which you will see when you self-publish through markets like Kindle, Kobo, and Nook).
  - lucasjung 15y ago
    Most of those eBooks are still being published by the big old publishing houses. Of the authors who are successfully self-publishing, most started out publishing through traditional channels, built up large fanbases that way, and then broke out on their own once they had sufficient popularity to sell books without help from the big publishers. People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The dime novels you mention were not just an entry-level publishing platform: their more important function was to let the editors and publishers work with new authors, mentoring them and helping them grow. A guy with "one sale and one fan" is still missing the most important part: regular, constructive feedback from successful professionals.
javanix 15y ago
I'd be more excited about a really good self-publishing platform for non-interactive e-books. A lot of the cost of e-books comes from publishers needing to support various paper-related overhead like binding, printing, etc. If it was possible for an author to self-publish I suspect it'd be very easy for them to equal the per-book profits (obviously, advertising would be a different story) that they'd get going through Harper-Collins or the like.
- roc 15y ago
  Can't you self-register and publish whatever you want via Kindle and iBooks? Specifically to your second point, you may want to read this link: http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer
  - javanix 15y ago
    Oh, yes, you can. But I think its probably beyond the technical abilities of many authors. If there was a cheap, e-book-only publisher around that could help with all of the traditional publisher duties (editing, typesetting, advertising, etc) without the overhead of actually printing anything (or at least with being able to print things on demand rather than buying a big batch and praying) I think there would definitely be money to be made. The number of submissions that large publishers get every day has got to be staggering - what if a small company could dedicate their extra resources to actually reading through more of them than Random House can? The beauty of the novel that it is pure content, especially on an e-reader.
- dpapathanasiou 15y ago
  "I'd be more excited about a really good self-publishing platform for non-interactive e-books." Check out eBookBurn.com (https://ebookburn.com/ https://ebookburn.com/), which is one of my projects.
cletus 15y ago
This is interesting because this was what I was going to do mid-last year but decided to go work for Google instead. There were other issues involved. Another key one was the biz dev side.
ugh 15y ago
What's great about Push Pop Press is that their interaction design doesn't suck. All iPad magazines I have tried suck. Big time. I feel lost, gestures don't work as expected, magazines take forever to download. They definitely did a great job with the software, I encountered none of those problems.
wdewind 15y ago
This is not self publishing, this is powerpoint.
r0s 15y ago
Sounds like they're trying to recreate the web. On a tiny platform, limited to the ebook market, mac only. How is that in anyway pushing towards mainstream?
jamesbritt 15y ago
"The app is the richest form of storytelling" What a bizarre claim.

68 points by benwerd 15y ago

Jun8 15y ago

WOW! This has the potential to be really big. Just think about all the cookbooks, children's storybooks, and DIY guides you can create easily with such a tool, if it's done right.

steverb 15y ago
I'm getting flashbacks from the heyday of CD-ROM publishing. I suspect the end story will be the same.
- Jun8 15y ago
  Maybe not. I've already spent $20-30 on iPad audio books for my son, they highlight the words as they are read, he loves them. iPad is his favorite toy, unfortunately, I've found out: I bought him a Stinky the Garbage Truck for $50that he's been talking about and he still wants to play with the iPad. And he's 4!
- gaius 15y ago
  CD-ROM? I'm getting flashbacks to HyperCard...
- ugh 15y ago
  CD-ROMs are physical, you have to buy them in a store or order them from somewhere, you have to put them in those huge, bulky computers and sit in front of them. I see few, if any, points of comparison. Magazines and books on tablets might still fail but I fail to see how comparisons to CD-ROM publishing are useful.

lucasjung 15y ago

The internet is already full of self-published crap because self-publishing in digital form is already trivially easy. Making it easier to self-publish is not going to disrupt the publishing industry, because the publishing industry still serves a valuable service: they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories. More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading. If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging).

Shorel 15y ago
You can self publish a lot of free and full of ads crap. Self publishing to the App Store seems a good model for professional writers, the diference is a distribution channel you can profit from without ads. This is more a competition to Amazon and Kindle than competition to blogs and wordpress sites.
muhfuhkuh 15y ago
"they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories." Wouldn't customers be a better sifter than the publishing industry? Word of mouth and discovery? Samples and free reading demos (like Barnes and Noble does when you go into the store with a Nook)? And, for every published nugget, there are tonnage worth of published muck and runoff polluting the shelves; their filter isn't so great either. "If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) and and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging)." The publishing industry is plenty disrupted by the fact that eBooks are now 30% of their entire market in copies sold and is the format with the biggest share (2nd place is mass market paperback). Amazon sells more eBooks than paperback and hardcover. And, an increasing number of self-published authors are finding their way to the top 100 on Kindle and Nook paid eBook charts. Some self-pubbed authors have multiple titles in the Amazon top 100, meaning they sell at least several hundred of each of their titles per day. As far as developing professional writer skills, you're ready for the business the minute you've made a sale and perhaps a fan. The idea of the minimum viable product (MVP) in the professional writer's world is akin to the dime novel or "penny dreadfuls" of yesteryear, where some of the greatest genre writers (Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, HP Lovecraft) started their craft with generally bad writing. Believe me, nothing says "welcome to reality" like getting a godawful review or even a return (which you will see when you self-publish through markets like Kindle, Kobo, and Nook).
- lucasjung 15y ago
  Most of those eBooks are still being published by the big old publishing houses. Of the authors who are successfully self-publishing, most started out publishing through traditional channels, built up large fanbases that way, and then broke out on their own once they had sufficient popularity to sell books without help from the big publishers. People who jump right into self-publishing and experience dramatic success are way out in the narrow part of the tail. The dime novels you mention were not just an entry-level publishing platform: their more important function was to let the editors and publishers work with new authors, mentoring them and helping them grow. A guy with "one sale and one fan" is still missing the most important part: regular, constructive feedback from successful professionals.

javanix 15y ago

I'd be more excited about a really good self-publishing platform for non-interactive e-books. A lot of the cost of e-books comes from publishers needing to support various paper-related overhead like binding, printing, etc. If it was possible for an author to self-publish I suspect it'd be very easy for them to equal the per-book profits (obviously, advertising would be a different story) that they'd get going through Harper-Collins or the like.

roc 15y ago
Can't you self-register and publish whatever you want via Kindle and iBooks? Specifically to your second point, you may want to read this link: http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer
- javanix 15y ago
  Oh, yes, you can. But I think its probably beyond the technical abilities of many authors. If there was a cheap, e-book-only publisher around that could help with all of the traditional publisher duties (editing, typesetting, advertising, etc) without the overhead of actually printing anything (or at least with being able to print things on demand rather than buying a big batch and praying) I think there would definitely be money to be made. The number of submissions that large publishers get every day has got to be staggering - what if a small company could dedicate their extra resources to actually reading through more of them than Random House can? The beauty of the novel that it is pure content, especially on an e-reader.
dpapathanasiou 15y ago
"I'd be more excited about a really good self-publishing platform for non-interactive e-books." Check out eBookBurn.com (https://ebookburn.com/ https://ebookburn.com/), which is one of my projects.

cletus 15y ago

This is interesting because this was what I was going to do mid-last year but decided to go work for Google instead. There were other issues involved. Another key one was the biz dev side.

ugh 15y ago

What's great about Push Pop Press is that their interaction design doesn't suck. All iPad magazines I have tried suck. Big time. I feel lost, gestures don't work as expected, magazines take forever to download. They definitely did a great job with the software, I encountered none of those problems.

wdewind 15y ago

This is not self publishing, this is powerpoint.

r0s 15y ago

Sounds like they're trying to recreate the web. On a tiny platform, limited to the ebook market, mac only. How is that in anyway pushing towards mainstream?

jamesbritt 15y ago

"The app is the richest form of storytelling" What a bizarre claim.