Flip Our Pages - A Crypto-Powered Bookstore
Okay...What do you mean?
How exactly can we have a crypto-powered bookstore? Well, it's simple, you see this account is going to be one of our ways of raising capital in our quest to have a brick and mortar store! Once we have a brick and mortar, we plan on accepting various types of cryptocurrencies as payment for books and delivery. If it goes really well, we might look at getting into epublishing and featuring authors from steemit as part of our regular stable. In fact, now that I think about it, that part might come sooner rather than later!
Who exactly are you?
We are @prairiepinner and @mwoodall, a husband and wife team in the province of Saskatchewan, smack dab in the middle of Canada. Right now , we operate a book booth at a regular market in the city, but our dream is to be able to own and operate a brick and mortar store and to be able to share our love of books with people from all around the world.
Why a bookstore?
Isn't that kind of old-fashioned and a bad business model?
You might think so, wouldn't you? New technology like crypto and blockchain combining with old technology like books...that's just not something you'd seriously consider. The truth is that we believe cryptocurrencies have the potential for serious change in the world around us, and that we are at the cusp of another technological revolution, not unlike the one that happened after Gutenberg's printing press.
This is not our bookstore, but we do want people to be this comfortable in it!
We know that we will never be able to compete with major companies on price, but we strongly believe that there is a place in business for a bookstore staffed with people who genuinely know and love books. Our goal is to be able to point you to your next great read, or favourite author, even before you know you're looking for one. We want our employees to have read every book that interests them, and maybe even a few that don't...and we want to have time to do the same!
This sounds interesting...I want in!
That's great! We would love to have you join our community. If you want to support us, you can resteem and upvote our posts. If you've found a great author that you think we should know about, let us know! If you are an author (aspiring or otherwise), let us know and we will come and take a look at your work! Once have figured out the whole epublishing thing, we might even look at becoming publishers and helping you publish your work!
What's next?
Well, our crypto adventure begins today. We would like to see what comes next for us, and how this experiment will work out! We will be out trolling steemit for great authors and content to add to our virtual shelves. Our first goal will be raising enough money to build up our stock and maybe get in with some of the major publishing houses as a distributor for first-run books. But, we need money to invest in order to do that. We hope that you'll join us along the way and enjoy the journey alongside us!
welcome! Im glad youve decided to joined the party!
Long live and prosper.
Well, thank you! I've actually been around for a few months over at @mwoodall, which is my personal account. But, we decided to bring our idea to the party, and see what happens!
Peace, and long life!
One question: what makes your bookstore, or concept, crypto-powered?
Will you be renting your premises only from somebody who accepts crypto? Will you operate a type of bookcrossing using a blockchain (maybe SMTOracles)? Will you sell only books written by adopters of crypto? All of which obviously transparently maintained in a blockchain.
Will a blockchain power your PoS and accounting? When I check whether you have a book available, is that kept in a blockchain?
Or do you actually mean crypto-funded, crypto-fundraised?
Okay...so my general ignorance is showing. Right now, my technical level of knowledge allows for a crypto-funded/fundraised business model. As I understand the blockchain better, we would like to expand out into using it for more tools. I like the permanence and transparency of the blockchain, and am curious about this bookcrossing idea that you talk about. We do want to highlight authors who are using crypto, particularly on the steemit blockchain, but we won't limit ourselves strictly to blockchain technology.
I'm interested in finding out more about the other uses that you're talking about, specifically the bookcrossing and the blockchain-powered PoS and accounting. Any good links for someone who really doesn't understand the technology right now?
Bookcrossing is just a community, active mostly in Germany, but it was something which sprang to mind as I would looking for elements I could add to possible blockchain implementations.
The core concept of bookcrossing is that somebody leaves a/any book behind somewhere, with or without note in the book, and then lists in the bookcrossing community where that tile has been left behind. First one who collects it is the one who gets to read it. OT does whatever they want it. With SMTOracles this could possibly become a more accountable thing because the real life action of collecting the book could be tied to reputation, just like continuing the chain. Rather than say stalk the community to resell, or hold, all books collected.
Register/Point-of-Sale being blockchain backed isn’t that technically challenging. But for example a further implementation of the Steem (rewards) system could be that you actually use Steem rewards to for example invite, crowdfund, reading sessions by authors.
Example: Neil Gaimann holds a poetry session at your store, validated and crowdfunded by the Steem community. Crowdfunding, and especially crowdfunding events, are perfect models for Smart Media Tokens. Even more so if the initial selection of which artist to invite is done by a (Steem based) voting mechanic. The rewards, the level of financial backing for a specific artist, could be considered Validation and may be sufficient to find more backers because basic interest (a type of product market fit) is existing and high enough to go the distance.