Execution is the only thing that matters. So, here are a dozen simple ideas that popped into my head while I was on the train the other day. Keep the dime because ideas are actually not even worth that much. Some of these ideas are quite crap and dumb and vague so caveat emptor.
Use software to leverage an old business model
Use ecommerce to build a print book distribution company. Start off on the long tail. Make an ecommerce site worthy of Amazon but make it so that only registered businesses can order. Be the ‘other’ book distribution company, the one that corporations use to buy in bulk, the one that book retailers use for the backlist because using your site is much easier than whatever messy crap it is that their other distributor offers.
A print-only bookstore app that uses Stripe, Touch ID, bar code scanning and location-based discounts to sell print books. Start off by focusing on a single genre or field, like SFF or comics. Be the hard place to Amazon’s rock that bricks and mortar book retailers are in between.
Use software to create demand for existing product
A subscription site for SFF short stories. Scifi and fantasy has an almost epic tradition for short stories, one that continues to this day. Fans will pay a monthly subscription to a site and app combo that gives them access to an extensive collection of modern and classic SFF short stories.
A proper digital book club. People have been trying this already but it’s one of those things that has room for more.
Go where big companies can’t go because of the strategy they are pursuing
Print-only publisher. Since traditional publishers and those that copy them are committed to the ‘all the IP, all the time’ strategy, that leaves an opening for those who are open to the idea of getting exclusive print rights to existing self-publishing bestsellers for cheap. There are a lot of books out there with a proven track record and no print editions.
Do a magazine app but model it on Slack and not on a print magazine. (Issues? In an app? What the fuck is wrong with you?). Model it on the stream, short content mixed with occasional longer pieces. Mirror on the web and twitter. Keep the longer pieces behind a porous paywall. In-app subscription model. Allow comments but do them in app only. Model the social bits of the app on Slack or Hipchat. ‘Retweet’ interesting comments into the app’s public stream. Print+digital magazine publishers can’t copy you without severely compromising their print product.
Use software to connect readers with stuff they like
A Medium-Patreon hybrid that specialises in digital publishing and handles VAT. Offer a Medium-class writing and publication platform for the private posts and optionally for the public ones as well (though, as in Patreon, the selling point to creators is that they can build on their own web platform).
A genre-specific ebook store (such as SFF). DRM-free. Have an in-app store with books from the publishers who are willing to give up margin. Heavy focus on bundling as a discount and promotion strategy to get around ‘most favoured nation’ clauses. Get genre and comics artists to create exclusive and optional covers for popular books that buyers can choose instead of the publisher’s default. Do cover themes and multi-title alt cover/art events. Steal Sam Missingham’s ideas and tactics for online social media genre festivals.
A preorder service for books styled after Kickstarter. Crowdfunding works best when the actual capital requirements of a project are quite high. In a world of ebooks and print-on-demand, books are too cheap for their production to be that much of an uncertainty and their sales are low enough for the crowdfunding marketing disjoint (first you market the crowdfunding, then months later you market the book) to be somewhat harmful. So take out the uncertainty and instead pitch it as a preorder platform that is otherwise structured exactly like a traditional crowdfunding platform (rewards, stretch goals, etc.). The only change is that people know that the book is coming out and the preorder campaign leads unbroken into the release campaign.
Using software to leverage human effort
A CMS for book creation. Plenty of existing competitors but also plenty of room for more variety. We need simpler book CMSes and more complex ones. We need CMSes that specialise in group collaboration and ones that are designed to specifically to help one person make a great book. We need app-based tools and web-based tools, ebook-oriented tools and print+ebook tools. Don’t aim to conquer the world, make each one either a little bit expensive or open source, and build with a small team.
An ebook fulfilment service that optionally offers its own payment platform. Something to manage a publisher’s catalogue (self- or traditional) and connects it with whatever they’re using to sell it. Even just having one place to edit the metadata for a book and download copies to send elsewhere would be useful to many.
Version control and issue tracker for docx files. Bonus points for giving people the abiity to strip out ‘track changes’ crap and formatting. Extra bonus points if you help people automatically strip out custom styles and apply a house style. Docx and Word are horrible horrible things but for some insane reason publishers hang onto it. It’s unfair if Microsoft is the only company that makes money from the publishing industry’s irrational fixation on the format.
An ebay for secondary book rights: translation rights, regional rights, etc.