So, the other day I was browsing Amazon for e-books, and I thought, these books are nice, but amateur writers are putting out stuff that's just as good. The only reason I'm not reading it is because it's typically scattered across the webs and in a myriad of formats that my cheap e-reader can't handle.
I spoke with some friends who write on the side, and was wondering if anyone there would be genuine interest in a website that allows writers to create writing projects and request assistance for volunteer editors to convert their works to e-pub or another open format. When done, the authors could release the works as published to the site index to allow the lazy browsing public (like myself) to easily access them. I'd prefer everything to be released under a creative commons or another license that precludes DRM, but am open to suggestions. Basically, I don't like the idea of the future of literature being captured by entirely by Amazon or the iTunes stores. It's nothing personal towards authors that have their works available there, but the notion of artificial scarcity forcing public libraries to have countdown-to-self-destructing style rentals of a digital file is a turn-off.
The site would provide versioned storage to help authors and editors collaborate, as well as build a community of writers using open source tools to publish electronically. I'd love to have a large enough base for users to create fanclubs around favorite writers and a donations system to reward author/editor teams. The last is especially interesting to me since a $1 donation straight to a writer can be equivalent to a $5 traditional e-book purchase where the author's contract only nets 20% of retail.
But it's all just a quick internet rant unless there's actual amateur writers and editors interested. How does it sound? Is there anything you folks would like to see (or not see) in such a site or am I solving a problem that doesn't exist? I have no desire to eliminate the existing amateur communities, only provide a new service to help writers get their works into e-book formats to reach the most consumers.
Thank you,
Louis
I spoke with some friends who write on the side, and was wondering if anyone there would be genuine interest in a website that allows writers to create writing projects and request assistance for volunteer editors to convert their works to e-pub or another open format. When done, the authors could release the works as published to the site index to allow the lazy browsing public (like myself) to easily access them. I'd prefer everything to be released under a creative commons or another license that precludes DRM, but am open to suggestions. Basically, I don't like the idea of the future of literature being captured by entirely by Amazon or the iTunes stores. It's nothing personal towards authors that have their works available there, but the notion of artificial scarcity forcing public libraries to have countdown-to-self-destructing style rentals of a digital file is a turn-off.
The site would provide versioned storage to help authors and editors collaborate, as well as build a community of writers using open source tools to publish electronically. I'd love to have a large enough base for users to create fanclubs around favorite writers and a donations system to reward author/editor teams. The last is especially interesting to me since a $1 donation straight to a writer can be equivalent to a $5 traditional e-book purchase where the author's contract only nets 20% of retail.
But it's all just a quick internet rant unless there's actual amateur writers and editors interested. How does it sound? Is there anything you folks would like to see (or not see) in such a site or am I solving a problem that doesn't exist? I have no desire to eliminate the existing amateur communities, only provide a new service to help writers get their works into e-book formats to reach the most consumers.
Thank you,
Louis