The response to my last article, The Rise of NFT Books, was so positive that I decided to dive in again and explore other aspects of what make NFT books so potentially powerful.
Since last week, Book.io, the preeminent Web3 publisher of NFT books, has minted three more with great success. (Again, in full disclosure, the first book in my bestselling Lawson Vampire series, THE FIXER, mints with Book.io on Friday November 4th) Book’s passion for groundbreaking mints has been on full display with each one thus far and shows no signs of abating - a good sign for authors everywhere.
With that in mind, let’s delve deeper into what exactly NFT books have the potential to transform for authors.
A New Audience
Writers and authors have long labored to find and keep readers. Without them, we don’t have a career. It’s that simple. But ever since the printing press was invented, we’ve never truly known exactly who our readers have been. Even when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church doors, he didn’t know if the cobbler down the street would read it or if the priest inside would. He, like authors everywhere, just hoped that someone might.
This has gone unchanged ever since.
Certainly these days, authors have newsletters. We have social media networks. And we have friends and family who tell us they will be sure to pick up our books, but we don’t have any way of confirming if they ever did buy a copy unless we happen to sign it.
Until now.
Because every transaction is registered on the blockchain, the wallet addresses of every purchaser are accessible to us. We can see immediately who bought our books. And we can follow those bread crumbs through mints, sales, and secondary sales.
Further, it’s my opinion (completely unfounded and unscientific, but hey - it’s my article) that Web3 audiences are more likely to read given the pace at which technology is innovating. Web3 proponents seem more inquisitive and likely to explore topics as they keep tabs on the ever-evolving landscape. That alone bodes well for authors, especially in light of recent studies that show many Web2 people barely read books after they leave school.
But NFT books could also enable authors to potentially bring Web2 readers over to a new ecosystem, albeit at a much slower pace. There’s a significant amount of social media fatigue out there, but alternatives like Discord provide a place where authors and readers can engage without big tech algorithms throttling posts. As technology evolves in the Web3 space, there are actually more opportunities for authors to connect on a much more meaningful level than there are on places like Facebook.
Between new Web3 readers and the migration of Web2 readers, NFT books offer authors a chance to exponentially expand their fan base.
Multi-Content Creation
NFT books also offer something that regular ebooks and printed books cannot: multimedia bonuses. In the first few years after ebooks stormed to proverbial beaches of entrenched publishing, proponents predicted that ebooks would eventually be interactive and have all sorts of extra bells and whistles attached to make them more than just a digital file. Some enterprising folks tried to bring them to market, but they were never truly adapted.
NFT books can do this…and more. One of Book’s latest mints was a novel called The Wizard Tim featuring an obese and lazy town wizard and his assistant who have a fondness for eating pies. In addition to the book itself, folks who minted a copy will have an audiobook airdropped to them at a later time. This audiobook - with a fully-produced cast of voice actors - is a wonderful and tangible benefit to having minted the book itself. And the authors of the book, Tim Canada and Joseph Eleam, can do even more if they choose to - rewarding their readers at any time now or in the future.
It doesn’t stop there. Any novel or book could have its own range of multimedia extras. Imagine a link being airdropped that leads the minter to a video chat with the author, or even an audio excerpt of the author reading a funny or sexy passage.
Ahead of the mint for my own novel, THE FIXER, I’ve been putting together video teasers to seed social media with. But those same teasers could be airdropped to minters of the book, especially as a TV series or feature film moves into full production.
Authors now have the opportunity to write books and directly reward fans for minting them. The days of bookmarks and pens might have been nice, but could now be spent offering up more than just trinkets. Authors can, for example, produce their own podcast for little money and airdrop that to their readers. They don’t have to worry about finding a distributor - the blockchain itself becomes the distributor with a direct line into each of the wallet addresses that minted the author’s NFT book.
The Changing Importance of Reviews
If you search the internet for five minutes or less, you’ll likely find an author’s horror story about some idiot giving them a bad review. And while most professional authors tend to ignore reviews, there’s no doubt that their importance - especially on retail sites like Amazon - has been huge. The algorithms that serve up suggested reading material are weighted strongly toward whether you have a lot of 5-star reviews or not. Even on non-retail sites reviews play a factor.
With NFT books, that may change. Pre-mint, it will obviously benefit the author to publicize any good reviews the book has gotten (blurbs too). Once minted, if the purchaser hates the book, they can simply resell it on the secondary market - something they cannot do now on Amazon or elsewhere.
It’s also entirely predictable that within the professional publishing trades forthcoming mints will be announced along with a review of the book. Whether the same gravitas is extended toward professional reviewers as once was remains to be seen.
Grabbing the Long Tail
Creators have always aspired to achieve what some folks call the Long Tail. “If I can just reach 1,000 committed fans who buy everything I create, I’ll make enough to sustain myself.” But as I’ve mentioned previously, identifying your most loyal fans has always been a challenge. People say one thing and often do another. So while an author might have fans who are vocally supportive, we don’t often know if that talk translates into sales. The inability of authors to access hard sales data means that we often play guessing games when it comes to identifying who the ardent fans are.
That changes with NFT books. Having access to the wallet address of those who mint our books means we can see if they stick around for another book; if they read through the entire series; if they sell quickly after minting or if they hold; and much more. All of these data points help an author formulate appropriate marketing, promotion, and rewards for those who are in it for the long haul. It therefore becomes far easier identifying the people who buy all of our books versus the ones who might just be idly curious.
It’s entirely possible that enterprising authors who move into NFT books will be able to develop reward tokens for those fans who do indeed mint everything and become part of that fabled “long tail.” And some authors may actually develop an entire ecosystem built around identifying the true fans we have always sought. This will be a sort-of inverse relationship to what many creators have right now on Patreon and other sites. There, patrons support the creator (“I give you X number of dollars every month and in exchange you give me content.”) But with blockchain data access, creators can instead reward patrons who consistently mint the author’s books (“I reward you for helping me sell out each and every one of my mints.”)
Collectible NFT Books and Mass Market NFT Books
In their current incarnation, Book is minting collectible NFT books. Similar in nature to printed limited edition books, they are priced higher and feature more extras than the mass market editions that are available to everyone else.
But mass market NFT books are also coming…and soon. With a lower entry price point, these editions will have fewer derivations, if at all. They will be almost identical to regular ebooks available at other retail outlets…save for the fact that those who mint will actually own what they buy.
This two-tier approach to marketing NFT books will most likely help migrate Web2 readers into the Web3 environment - especially as the technology becomes seamless. In other words, while currently you need cryptocurrency and a crypto wallet to mint, the platform will evolve such that anyone with a credit card will be able to bypass, so to speak, the crypto aspect and simply input their credit card number to mint. Or else your credit card will be enabled for crypto transactions and it will be just as simple.
The collector’s market for NFT books will continue to exist as authors will first mint those editions. A mass market NFT book will probably come out some time after the collectible almost like how movies used to have “windows” with a theatrical release prior to moving to home cable or streaming.
Immediate Payment
If you’ve ever wondered what payment looks like in the traditional publishing world, it goes something like this: a deal is offered, usually with an advance against future royalties. That advance is typically paid half on signing the contract and half on the acceptance of the manuscript. (Some contracts do it 1/3 on signing, 1/3 at midway point, and 1/3 on acceptance.) That advance is money the publisher pays you that it then recoups once your book goes on-sale. And if you have an agent, they get ten percent of everything you earn.
Here’s the problem: the time that it takes for traditional publishers to bring a book to market - to put it in stores - can be anywhere from one year to eighteen months on average. So that money you got upfront has to last you that length of time. And trust me when I tell you that the amount of most advances for anyone other than the highest bestselling authors can be boiled down to…well, let’s just leave it up to ol’ Matt Foley, shall we?
Jack. Squat.
Exactly.
Now, when you’re finally in bookstores you’re excited because hey, you’re finally published! But that excitement only lasts so long. Say, maybe six months, which is right around when your very first royalty statement comes in. Publishers pay royalties every six months - because there’s nothing that says, “we refuse to change and embrace technology for the benefit of our authors” like paying someone twice a year and expecting them to survive on it.
Your royalty statement pretty much looks like it was uncovered in an ancient tomb of some forgotten Sumerian priest. You try to find your advance and the first bits of sales that were counted against it. Lessee, units sold…uh huh…that means this much has gone back to publisher as they recoup their advance money they paid me, which should leave me with…wait, what in the holy F is that?
“Reserves Against Returns?”
Oh yes, indeed. The infamous Reserves Against Returns is a cute little amount that publishers use to cushion their bottom line against the returns that might come in from the very same bookstore who purchased copies of your book. The store can return the unsold copies for their money back. Unless you’re in mass market paperback, in which case they simply strip the cover off and send that back, and then junk the actual book.
So that money you thought was going toward your advance is instead being held onto by the publisher in their account, being pooled with tons of other Reserves Against Returns dollars earning all sorts of interest while you hope and pray that the bookstore doesn’t return that many copies. Don’t worry, after another couple of royalty statements, that money slowly gets released to count toward earning out your advance.
And then finally, you’ve earned out and can hopefully now expect some actual royalties to come into your account. Typically a year or two after you hit the shelves. Of course, by now, for the majority of authors, your book is dead: it lives in the stores for a mere six weeks on average.
(It’s at this point that I realize I could have simply written an entire series of articles on the absurdity of accounting practices employed by traditional publishing…)
ANYWAY…it’s not a good way to live - looking at the mailbox expectantly every six months. It’s stupid, antiquated, and frankly there’s no way it should be like this. Even grocery stores that sell old milk back to the wholesaler usually take a loss of $1.50 per gallon. But in traditional publishing that loss is passed directly to the author, not the publisher.
NFT Books are a game changer. You get paid at the moment of the transaction. In perpetuity. You can plan your finances instead of having to peer into a crystal ball and wonder how much of your Reserves Against Returns are going to be released this half of the year. “Eight bucks? Well, maybe May 2372 will be better.”
No thanks.
Traditional publishing is utterly brutal when it comes to an author’s finances and stories abound of forensic accounting uncovering all sorts of…well, let’s just call them “anomalies.” NFT books solve this problem in a huge and empowering way.
These are just a few of the aspects of NFT books that will revolutionize the entire creator economy. Yes, authors will likely reap the benefits first thanks to Book.io, but this same method will extend to musicians, filmmakers, and anyone else soon, too. Web3 has the potential to truly empower creators. Freed from the limits imposed by big tech and its algorithms as well as their obligation to shareholders, advances in Web3 and blockchain technology mean that creators will be able to know their fans, reach those fans, and get paid by those fans - faster and more accurately than ever before.
Not a bad time to be creating…
If you enjoyed this or the previous article, feel free to mint it as an NFT and send a little coin my way. Because I’m never against pimping myself, lol…