Steempublishing Books: How we’ll implement this.
Approval of Steemit owners requested! Here is my plan how to create SteemPublishing. Yesterday I suggested the creation of SteemPublishing so that we can publish our Steemit content in book form.
SteemPublishing website
In January I will start to make a SteemPublishing Website where you can submit your manuscripts for editing and which will become the portal to sell your book and ebook online. The criterion for publication is that you have already made all this content available on Steemit!
SteemPublishing as a non-profit foundation
SteemPublishing will be a non-profit organisation: The profit will go 100% to the authors of the book. We will of course have costs of the shipping and printing of the book. If you let your book be edited by SteemPublishing, we will bring a certain percentage of the returns of the book into account for a certain period i.e. until our costs are covered.
If the owners of Steemit agree (and I will consider an upvote by a whale as a non-written approval of this proposal) I will go to the chamber of commerce here in the Netherlands and found SteemPublishing as a non-profit foundation.
Website design
As I do not have a lot of experience in creating websites (and none in creating commercial websites) I’d like to ask the developers on this platform to give me a hand.
SteemPublishing will be linked to the Steemtools-Hub and will be an integral part of the Steemit ecosystem.
Printing and Selling
Since I don’t own a printing company I have thought of the following solution. On Lulu.com authors can self-publish their books. The drawback is that this attracts 0% attention. We can however use their printing facilities as the physical quality of the books they print is excellent and not expensive at all.
Your book will then for instance be available on both Lulu and the SteemPublishing website. In your book on the first page you will mention that it has been published by Steempublishing and on the cover you will put a Steem-like (same colours different shape) logo.
Alternatively you don’t even need to make your work available from the Lulu site: On Lulu you can also create “secret projects” which are not visible to the outside world. So whenever someone orders a book on the SteemPublishing website, we’ll have it printed via Lulu, and then we’ll ship it to our clients.
As already explained yesterday, if the sales of a book reach a certain threshold, I will contact bookstores to make it available there too.
Business considerations and Crowdfunding
If you have additional ideas to help me develop a business plan please join in and help me, because I have no entrepreneurial experience whatsoever. I’m just a patent examiner.
I’m also thinking of having this project crowdfunded, because especially if we want to bring our books to the bookshops, we’ll face serious costs. In fact I commit to putting all rewards made on Steemit with posts about SteemPublishing in the SteemPublishing foundation.
If you have additional ideas and suggestions or if you disagree with my plan-de-campagne please let me know. At this point everything can be discussed and changed, because no course of action has been taken yet.
If you liked this post or want to fund it, please upvote and/or resteem.
Thank you for your attention and encouragements in the previous post, I clearly see the spirit is there among you to make this a reality.
Steem on! 
( The image on top is photoshopped, in reality my (self-published) books do not have the Steemit logo yet. )
Might not want to use 5 tags anymore, as it looks like only the first tag shows...
You lost a lot of exposure, and may not get the response you were looking for...
It's a great idea! A very important project!
Thanks!
I have changed the text since one is not allowed to use "steemit" in the name but steemlike names are ok. Could you resteem this post for me, otherwise the whales won't notice there has been a change.
Great idea,
I tried to get you in Steemit.chat. Maybe we could add a little to this.
Suggestion - unless you're doing a Steemit Inc project, you might avoid using "Steemit" in the name. We made that mistake with one of our projects and ended up changing it. "Steem" is fine, as it's like putting "Bitcoin" in a name. But Steemit is a trade name.
Wise one, good to learn from experience and share with others!
Thanks, I did not know that. It might explain why this post hasn't been whaled, despite the numerous votes. Steempub or Pubsteem ok?
Yeah, I'm in SteemPub. You might see me as just "Joe" there, or "Another Joe".
Now I changed it to SteemPublishing. Could you resteem it?
He did resteem it, only reason I ever saw it!
I like the idea!
Glad you liked it, but since I did not get the approval I asked for I guess the project has been torpedoed. I'll figure out an alternative in which I won't use the names Steem or Steemit. But of course that has much less impact.
Tried to see if u were on steemchat, but didn't find yr name. Then again I have no clue how steemchat works.
He is simply "joe" on chat.
I made changes: now it's SteemPublishing. Still can't find you on steemit.chat. It's a nightmare user interface.
I found you in Steemit.Chat and sent a message. It doesn't show that you're logged in though.
Discord is fine, if that's what you have. I don't see you logged in there though, unless it's under a different user.
I have a green dot in front of my name but don't see any messages whatsoever. Since I have installed steemit.chat I have never been able to chat there. It's an intelligence test I fail!
Steemit is not so great for publishing books on.
The problem is that there is a maximum block size. So you have to break up your book.
Also, you have to host all of your pictures somewhere else. This can be a big problem if your book contains many pictures.
Steemit also doesn't have much in the way of formatting or placing pictures and text. It has enough, if the blog like format works for your book, but if more is needed it becomes unworkable.
Self publishing is easy, just make a pdf and upload it, have it printed on lulu. Marketing is the hard part.
So, what do you see yourself doing as for the marketing part?
Good question. I have 0 experience there. Visit fairs, publish About the new platform, i guess. Would be great if we had someone with marketing experience. Do you?
This is a great idea but there's one big problem: distribution.
The only game in town, unless you're a major publishing house, is going through Amazon, both for ebooks and for print. They have a massive marketing empire and they've squeezed everyone else out of the digital and print publishing landscape to the point where trying to go against them without the clout of a coalition of major publishers behind you (Random House, etc.) is going to end the same way the Charge of the Light Brigade did.
Trust me, I don't like Amazon. That centralized whorehouse of unfettered capitalism has squeezed out competitors left and right because it can outperform on a volume level by undercutting their competitors' prices. However it's the only way to reach a mass market audience unless you invest in your own print runs at a major printer. The alternative is to go through print-on-demand services like Lulu.
I worked in a major independent bookstore for years. Back then, print-on-demand was something we simply wouldn't stock or order, primarily because the profit margins were nowhere near what we could get from a traditional publisher or even a distributor (industry standard for wholesalers is 40% off retail price). POD margins are much slimmer, and I fear that with Amazon hoovering up even more market share it's going to be impossible to find a bookstore that will stock a POD book.
Then again, if you're going to exclusively print and ship from the website, you don't have to worry about that. Your costs are going to be pretty high, most likely to the point where you're going to have to really bust your ass to break even. Running as a not-for-profit is definitely going to help that, but between paying for editing, proofing, layout, cover design, printing, and shipping, you might be better off just digging a big hole in your front yard, dumping a couple thousand dollars in there, and lighting it on fire.
Still, if I had the funds to support this project, I'd totally go all in. In fact, let me know if you get off the ground - I'll probably donate some Steem or SBD your way towards the establishment of a publishing house. Best of luck!! :)
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