4 ms·

Show HN: Tablo – Create and publish books socially

36 points by ashdav 13y ago

dethstar 13y ago
I don't really like the fact that despite having to pay to use the tools you're not getting all the royalties. Like buying carpenter tools and getting 80% royalties off the table you made.
- ashdav 13y ago
  We've had some feedback about this so we're toying with a new pricing model. See http://tablo.io/plans http://tablo.io/plans More inline with a blogging service. Thoughts?
  - dethstar 13y ago
    Yeah I think that's pretty okay I guess. I'm guessing it shouldn't look like this: http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png
    - ashdav 13y ago
      Nope, just a mockup. We'll make the real one look pretty :)
  - ics 13y ago
    That's much better– I came to comment on the same thing. The people with fewer titles are the ones who need the royalties much more so than anyone else so the current pricing comes across as a hedge on one small author blowing up rather than developing an ecosystem which benefits all small authors. I imagine down the line there are many more services you could offer in exchange for royalties that would make sense– the analytics are one except they're very helpful at the base level too. Perhaps an additonal layer/finer grained analytics, a featured catalog, other promotional services, etc...
  - bambax 13y ago
    The value you're providing is not obvious. It's really easy to publish an infinite amount of books on the Kindle store; I haven't tried iBookstore but I guess it's not very hard either (and do we need to care about them? What's their market share?) I'm not ready to pay someone to just sit between me and the Kindle store; and I certainly won't surrender any royalties for this. There are things in your presentation that do sound interesting, though: - early feedback as the book is being written (that could maybe result in good word-of-mouth marketing) - "incredible" sales reports But in any case, I think the pricing should be more inline with DistroKid ($20 annual flat fee, 100% royalties, infinite amount of titles).
bionsuba 13y ago
Looks nice, but there are three things that I absolutely need for any book publishing platform. * The ability to sell multiple packages, each with different files * The ability to capture buyer's emails * The ability to set my own arbitrary pricing No publishing site on the internet does this, and I am not about to give up these benefits just so I can have some automated convenience.
- duiker101 13y ago
  >The ability to capture buyer's emails why? I just want your book, why do you need my email?
  - davidw 13y ago
    As an author, it's beneficial to at least ask you for it, so that you can be added to an email list and be appraised of new projects and sent other relevant information. Lots of people are happy to sign up for email lists like that as long as the content is mostly informative and not too much of a sales pitch.
- davidw 13y ago
  Nathan Barry uses Gumroad, as he suggests in his book 'Authority' for the above reasons. It's not really a 'book' publishing platform though, or at least it's not specific to that. I'm not entirely convinced it's the best thing for most authors, but that's a longer post for another time.
  - bionsuba 13y ago
    Authority is where I got these requirements ;), and yes, its best suited for technical books IMO.
ams6110 13y ago
NoScript says your site is attempting an XSS attack.
mercurialshark 13y ago
Nice job! Question, are you guys using an API so users can share their contributions/writing potentially to other platforms?
jjsz 13y ago
Crowdfunding should be free, pageviews, editor needs to be like penflip, collaboration like social github, dedicated ircs, all billed by dedicated storage standards. Focus on the real service: publishing to multiple bookstores, ISBNs and collaboration.
abhia 13y ago
Can you comment on the pricing structure? Breakdown why exactly it is $99?
jwise0 13y ago
> Don't worry about tax details or bank approvals. The only thing you need is a PayPal email address! That is an incredibly bad idea to phrase things that way. In general, unless you're a tax attorney, you should not ever tell somebody not to worry about tax details. In the US, it's almost certainly the case that income from self-publishing is taxable, and there are lots of details that need to be worried about -- enough that a self-publishing site probably can't even get close to worrying about it for you.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
clin_ 13y ago
Hey! You're the guys I saw in the Avalon lounge Saturday night. Hope my drunken pool playing didn't annoy you too much. Things seem to be getting off to a good start with Tablo—good luck!
esschul 13y ago
There's some encoding issues here. Can't write æøå, which is important letters in the norwegian language. And it is seriously slow now, might be where it's been deployed, might be that I'm waiting for googleadservices on each page load. Might be the hug of death from hn.

36 points by ashdav 13y ago

I don't really like the fact that despite having to pay to use the tools you're not getting all the royalties. Like buying carpenter tools and getting 80% royalties off the table you made.

ashdav 13y ago
We've had some feedback about this so we're toying with a new pricing model. See http://tablo.io/plans http://tablo.io/plans More inline with a blogging service. Thoughts?
- dethstar 13y ago
  Yeah I think that's pretty okay I guess. I'm guessing it shouldn't look like this: http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png http://i.imgur.com/QfWgsHs.png
  - ashdav 13y ago
    Nope, just a mockup. We'll make the real one look pretty :)
- ics 13y ago
  That's much better– I came to comment on the same thing. The people with fewer titles are the ones who need the royalties much more so than anyone else so the current pricing comes across as a hedge on one small author blowing up rather than developing an ecosystem which benefits all small authors. I imagine down the line there are many more services you could offer in exchange for royalties that would make sense– the analytics are one except they're very helpful at the base level too. Perhaps an additonal layer/finer grained analytics, a featured catalog, other promotional services, etc...
- bambax 13y ago
  The value you're providing is not obvious. It's really easy to publish an infinite amount of books on the Kindle store; I haven't tried iBookstore but I guess it's not very hard either (and do we need to care about them? What's their market share?) I'm not ready to pay someone to just sit between me and the Kindle store; and I certainly won't surrender any royalties for this. There are things in your presentation that do sound interesting, though: - early feedback as the book is being written (that could maybe result in good word-of-mouth marketing) - "incredible" sales reports But in any case, I think the pricing should be more inline with DistroKid ($20 annual flat fee, 100% royalties, infinite amount of titles).

bionsuba 13y ago

Looks nice, but there are three things that I absolutely need for any book publishing platform. * The ability to sell multiple packages, each with different files * The ability to capture buyer's emails * The ability to set my own arbitrary pricing No publishing site on the internet does this, and I am not about to give up these benefits just so I can have some automated convenience.

duiker101 13y ago
>The ability to capture buyer's emails why? I just want your book, why do you need my email?
- davidw 13y ago
  As an author, it's beneficial to at least ask you for it, so that you can be added to an email list and be appraised of new projects and sent other relevant information. Lots of people are happy to sign up for email lists like that as long as the content is mostly informative and not too much of a sales pitch.
davidw 13y ago
Nathan Barry uses Gumroad, as he suggests in his book 'Authority' for the above reasons. It's not really a 'book' publishing platform though, or at least it's not specific to that. I'm not entirely convinced it's the best thing for most authors, but that's a longer post for another time.
- bionsuba 13y ago
  Authority is where I got these requirements ;), and yes, its best suited for technical books IMO.

ams6110 13y ago

NoScript says your site is attempting an XSS attack.

mercurialshark 13y ago

Nice job! Question, are you guys using an API so users can share their contributions/writing potentially to other platforms?

jjsz 13y ago

Crowdfunding should be free, pageviews, editor needs to be like penflip, collaboration like social github, dedicated ircs, all billed by dedicated storage standards. Focus on the real service: publishing to multiple bookstores, ISBNs and collaboration.

abhia 13y ago

Can you comment on the pricing structure? Breakdown why exactly it is $99?

jwise0 13y ago

> Don't worry about tax details or bank approvals. The only thing you need is a PayPal email address! That is an incredibly bad idea to phrase things that way. In general, unless you're a tax attorney, you should not ever tell somebody not to worry about tax details. In the US, it's almost certainly the case that income from self-publishing is taxable, and there are lots of details that need to be worried about -- enough that a self-publishing site probably can't even get close to worrying about it for you.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

clin_ 13y ago

Hey! You're the guys I saw in the Avalon lounge Saturday night. Hope my drunken pool playing didn't annoy you too much. Things seem to be getting off to a good start with Tablo—good luck!

esschul 13y ago

There's some encoding issues here. Can't write æøå, which is important letters in the norwegian language. And it is seriously slow now, might be where it's been deployed, might be that I'm waiting for googleadservices on each page load. Might be the hug of death from hn.