Book NFTs - Transforming Publishing

NFT books is the next step in publishing evolution. Ownership creates a secondary market, rewarding authors and publishers with royalties.

C-Level team previously built an eBook company that had 6M readers and 2M+ eBook titles. We worked with thousands of publishers and imprints including all Big 5 publishers. We delivered ebooks in bulk deals to Google, Apple, IBM, T-Mobile, Wall Street Journal, and General Mills.

[IMPACT]

Book Token will allow publishers and authors to mint book NFTs in a global marketplace for sale, unlocking a secondary market, and paying transitive royalties to IP owners.

The purpose of this proposal will be to build the foundational technology that will help Book Token scale. 

Cardano unlocks a tremendous amount of utility. Until now, publishers and authors have looked to centralized systems to distribute content that readers do not own, only license.

For mass adoption to happen on Cardano, we must give publishers the tools to put the billions of dollars they have in IP on-chain in the form of NFT eBooks. NFT books provide true digital ownership to books that endure forever, creating verifiable scarcity and unlocking transitive royalties.

From our conversations with three of the Big 5 publishers, publishers need a way to:

• release collector, limited and signed digital editions
• receive royalties on all book resales in perpetuity
• securely bundle physical print books with NFT books
• partner with brands to distribute NFTs in new ways
• anonymously market to anyone who holds, or has owned, particular titles
• get next-generation security and DRM to prevent digital counterfeiting
• increase efficiency, traceability, and transparency of sales reports
• unlock new revenue opportunities
• source and identify new Authors
• have new tools to measure reading analytics
• use NFTs to amplify marketing and social strategies
• deliver NFTs on a POS chain that has a minimal environmental impact

Building foundational technologies that allow publishers new revenue streams will expedite the adoption of Cardano, leading to millions of new readers to adopt, and experience the utility of the chain.

Our main risk is that we can’t pull enough development resources in a timely manner to deliver a prototype in the next 60 days. From our conversations, this is a solution that authors have been demanding of their publishing partners, so time is a critical factor to being first to market.

[FEASIBILITY]

Over the next 120 days, we will be developing and launching the Book Token prototype. Long-term plans for this project can be viewed on our whitepaper at: https://book-token.medium.com/book-token-the-path-to-decentralize-knowledge-1ee651d657c3

V0.1

Ability to create new users and verify with 2FA

- System generates Wallet Address for users Bookshelf

V0.2

Smart Contract Builder Page

- Ability to input book metadata and ePub content

- Assign Transitive Royalties to different wallets

- Ability to charge a credit card to pay the minting fee

- NFTs are then stored in a Users Bookshelf/Wallet

V0.3

Ability to open the book in an open-source reader online

- Basic functionality of turning pages

V0.4

Ability to transfer the book from one wallet address to another

- Address + QR code generation

V0.5

Basic Book Exchange

- User can post a book for sale on exchange for an amount

V0.6

Book Release Function

- User can list a book for its initial sale

V0.7

Basic Mobile App

- User can login

- User can access Bookshelf

- User can open book in Opensource Reader

- User can transfer books using QR code to another wallet

V0.8

Smart Contract Builder Page

- Book data/metadata is fully decentralized

V0.9

Advanced reader functionality

- Highlights, Notes, etc

20K- Development and outsourced dev resources

5K - Business development with publishers

Joshua Stone, CEO & Co-founder | Josh has been in Publishing Technology since 2009. Josh will run point on design, product development, and all day-to-day business activities.

Ben Illian, Co-founder | Ben has been leading the charge on partnering with publishers, which already includes 3 of the Big 5 publisher and several smaller publishing houses. It’s imperative to explain blockchain and NFT technologies to the publishing industry. These conversations are to create interest and discuss contracts to have access to their robust catalogs.

RJ Regenold, CTO | RJ has 20+ years of software engineering experience and advanced knowledge in Haskell. RJ will lead technical development and lead our outsourced dev team, which is led by the past Director of Technical Development at Zappos.

[AUDITABILITY]

Willing to allow Catalyst auditors access to our Trello boards.

We will host monthly Twitter spaces and allow access to our Telegram channel for interested Cardano community members.

Community access to any public GitHub commits.

Creating the key underlying technical foundation to create a marketplace for creating, selling, and reading book NFTs for publishers and therefore, the P2P market, with smart contracts controlling transitive royalties. At this point, we have 8 publishers and thousands of titles, ready to go live to sell NFT Books.

True long-term success will be to onboard the hundreds of millions of readers onto an easy-to-use platform that allows them to finally own and read their digital books.

No. This is our first application with catalyst.