Erik Bowman, a serial entrepreneur and a successful author himself has launched an online platform for budding and aspiring authors called Authr.com. The idea stems from the difficult for most first time authors to do their first project and even some established writers to do their next project. The book publishing as we all know is about finding a good agent, publisher and then publisher's strategy to market what an author writes. However, another route is self-publishing route which of course costs lot of monies. Either way it is extremely difficult to get people to be interested in reading and buying a new book. This is where what Bowman is doing to ease out the hurdles of the aspiring authors.
However, is there any-thing new in the concept itself, when sites like Lulu.com or Morris publishing have been doing almost the same for the writers. The only difference that Authr.com has with Lulu.com is to use 'social marketing' for fundraising for your project even before you start writing. The writer gets an opportunity to raise advance by his/her own efforts through social media, and the donations that your family, friends and well-wishers give make for your author's advance. Similarly, once you complete your writing project, you again get to market your own project through channel partners that Authr.com facilitates for a fee.
Sounds tempting enough for a new writer to shed the block and start writing. However, many creative people do not necessarily have either the will or the skill to market their own project. Is that a constraint? May or may not be, and may depend on your approach. If you are someone who will not mind writing about yourself and pitching in for your book, you are probably on the track that may lead to reasonable success, depending again on the content of what you wrote and how it interests your audience. Once after you publish the book, the book can be made available at various virtual or real locations and you also get an opportunity to publicize that.
Big budget self-publishing may soon be on its way out, when the test ground for getting your words to see the light of the day can happen in fraction of an amount of the spending that typically happens while self-publishing. The interesting aspect also is that you have a fund raising opportunity which can be treated as an advance for the book. Then you get to keep what the book sales can offer. While you only pay a partial or full service fee to the Authr, and nearly 20% of the sales commission in case you publish with websites such as Lulu.
Critically speaking, all of these web facilities are welcome moves for aspiring writers, however, having an embedded system that lets you reap benefits from social media is something that may prove to be a differentiator in this model.
Traditional book publishing is not going to go out anytime soon. There are authors that publishing houses like to pamper and therefore those authors would continue to go to publishing houses. There are some not so popular writers, who may choose to opt for marketing their book through sites such as Lulu or Morris or Authr. Anyway, the publishing houses offer only paltry sum to new or not so popular authors as an advance. So, this is the opportunity for those who have or can expect some definite reader base, may not even be a bestseller status book.
Online book publishing have evolved over a decade. While the e books are currently in trend, the traditional book sales are also happening at the same time. However, this is for the first time that someone thought of using lots of social media to spread the word about your book and raise funds. When the whole world is making use of the social media, no wonder Eric Bowman could bring it for those who thought are never able to cross the great publishing hurdle.