
Startup idea: Turnkey self-publishing service for authors - jasoncrawford
http://jasoncrawford.org/2011/12/startup-idea-turnkey-self-publishing-service-for-authors/
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bravura
Does anyone know about any ebook selling platforms that offer digital
watermarking that uses steganography? i.e. to detect who has pirated your
materials, via a secret message that dox'es the original purchaser.

I see no platform that will take your text (or PDF) and offer good
watermarking. Or, for that matter, _any_ watermarking besides a name and email
on every page.

Name and email is easily defeated, because this is easily stripped.

A successful system would be a multi-pronged, steganographic watermark
approach. The approach would, unfortunately, rely upon security by obscurity.

Whitespace approaches are good, but can be defeated by pdf2text followed by
PDF creation. Nonetheless, they form a decent prong.

Additionally, there is a language-model (NLP) based approach based upon
synonym substitution. Some common words can be replaced with synonyms without
significantly altering the meaning of the text. So if word A has 8
replacements, I just added three bits to my secret message, the watermark. (I
can't find the citation, sorry. If there is sufficient interest, I can dig it
up. Or email me.)

Additionally, these approaches can be improved by adding error correction, in
case there are minor modifications to the PDF.

As I said, these approaches are a weak form of security, but current
approaches offer _no_ security.

Exercise for the reader: If you can identify the pirate of your book, does
this really matter? You can at best shame the pirate, but not undo their
damage (widespread piracy), is my current understanding. Unless your
technology is so good that, like Google with SEOs, people are sufficiently
aware of your excellence that they are scared to even _dare_ to try to beat
you. Discuss.

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pace
Watermarking media can't be an answer to piracy. We already had the discussion
with music years ago. Imagine, you loose your external harddrive with tons of
your legally purchased media on it (all watermarked)—the founder makes a huge
torrent of your media and puts it on Bittorrent for two years. What would you
do then?

Watermarking could be a great way to protect IP but just this use case shows
its vulnerability.

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peterarmstrong
This is basically what we've done with Leanpub, except we're entirely focused
on ebooks. There's zero cost to use Leanpub; you write in Markdown on your
computer, we sync with Dropbox and we generate PDF, ePub and MOBI with one
click. The author gets 90% - 50 cent royalty. The only part that isn't turnkey
right now is automated export to Kindle store and iBookstore, but we're
working on that. (Right now you need to submit the Leanpub MOBI and ePub files
yourself.) The cost to write a book should just be opportunity cost: an author
shouldn't have to spend anything or give up any control in order to reach his
or her audience...

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amerine
How/do you handle royalties on the iBooks and Amazon sales?

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peterarmstrong
Currently you submit your Leanpub EPUB or MOBI file yourself to those stores
and we earn $0. You can also put the Leanpub PDF on Lulu to make a print book
(we earn $0 in that case too). Once we launch our automated Apple and Amazon
submit feature it will be a flat fee to use, and we will still fully support
you submitting yourself with us earning $0. We only try to make money when we
add value, not lock in etc -- it's your book, you own it.

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abhaga
This has been available in form of CreateSpace, Lulu, FastPencil etc in USA
for quite a long time. My own company, pothi.com provides a similar platform
to Indian authors and to outside authors targeting Indian market.

I personally believe that future of a lot of traditional publishing companies
is going to be of a curator working on top of such platforms. Even today many
publishers depend on book packaging companies that take in the manuscript or
even an outline and deliver the ready-to-print book.

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bhewes
I run a Literature in translation publishing company built on top of Ingram's
Lighting Source. I also am deal with publishing issues at Los Angeles Review
of Books. Few authors have any desire to self publish. The barrier to entry to
write is so low there is tons of crap.

Look, what would be useful is new author discovery tools. Or anything that
helps find talent. Or tools for independent publishers who are not tech savvy.
Non cryptic book sales analytics. Easy to use EDI systems.

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keeptrying
Where would one get access to book sales data? It seems amazon owns all that
data so its hard to get to personal sales numbers to make them easier to use.

Or are you talkign about data from bowker.com ?

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bhewes
For independent publishers something as simple as tying their print sales
together with digital sales. This is already pretty simple, but it needs to be
stupid simple. You can guess your Amazon sales data pretty easily.

Bowker.com is alright, but it is difficult to compare say English translations
of Spanish Experimental Prose Novellas to see if you are competitive in the
market. You would be suprised how little independent publishers know about
their competitive positions.

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keeptrying
I'm building the other part of the equation, ie how to find and hire great
editors and artists. Would you be interested in doing a skype call sometime?

I think if we can work together somehow we might be seriously able to make
self publishing easier and Still facilitate high quality editing and art work.

I sent an email to Peter already and I'll send you an email tomorrow when I
get up. Gnat. My email s in my profile.

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amerine
There seems to be a growing number of people using 99designs for cover
designs.

Are thinking more along the lines of matching up illustrators/artists to
authors for art inside the books?

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keeptrying
99designs has a lot of problems. The competition aspect is the main one. IT
seems to draw the less experienced artists or ones looking for work. If 6
artists apply and do work for a competition, only one gets paid. I have seen
lots blog posts from artists who dislike this.

I'd like to bring out the more experienced ones, with a deeper portfolio who
are looking to build their reputations rather than do quick designs for
someone.

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davidw
I have some ideas along these lines with LiberWriter, but I'm pretty happy
keeping it fairly niche.

