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A new marketplace is launching on Monday which should help indie authors and publishers connect to and hire the services they need to produce their next book.

Reedsy, which describes itself as a curated marketplace, soft-launched a few weeks ago in order to sign up industry-experienced editors, marketers, designers, etc, and on Monday it is opening up to authors.

You may have read about Reedsy earlier this year on TechCrunch:

Created by Emmanuel Nataf and Richard Fayet, the company is, to be fair, another in the long list of DIY publishing outfits. Like Tablo and Softcover, Reedsy offers a one-stop-shop for writers. However, the team has decided to create a services marketplace for authors who are looking for interior and cover designs as well as editing help.

That description might sound familiar to some of my readers; other startups have tried similar ideas with less than complete success. Most notably, BiblioCrunch launched in 2011 with almost the exact same business model as Reedsy, only to pivot less than a year later.

BiblioCrunch pivoted from a marketplace focus to offering a mentorship/concierge service on a monthly/yearly subscription. They still have that marketplace, but they found that there was less of a need for a marketplace than there was for guidance (via Skype, phone, email).

So does that suggest that Reedsy is pursuing an idea which is already proven to fail? I asked Ricardo Fayet, the co-founder of Reedsy, how he planned to differentiate its marketplace from BiblioCrunch and he told me:

Our first difference is in the quality and vetting of the people displayed. We go over each profile manually to make sure it fits our standards, and are able to attract real professionals.

That is because Reedsy is author-friendly as it is freelancer friendly. We don’t make freelancers pay to be listed on the marketplace, and never will. Also, Reedsy is not a "bidding" marketplace where authors post projects and wait for the hungriest, most reactive freelancers to submit their offers. Authors will have to select the people they’re interested in (based on the information showed on their profiles), and request a quote directly from those.

Finally, we are developing collaboration and project management tools to allow authors, editors and designers to work more efficiently together, and keep the workflow in one single place.

In short, this is more of a listing service than a competitive marketplace like, say, Fiverr. Correction: And to be fair, that is not a good description for BiblioCrunch’s marketplace either.

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I got Fayet’s email on Monday, so I’ve had most of a week to ponder Reedsy. Do you know what I think?

One, BlblioCrunch’s lack of success means less than one might assume, and two, I’m still not convinced there is a need for this type of service.

I think it’s been 3 years since BiblioCrunch launched, and two years since it pivoted to offer their VIP service. I think the market has changed radically in those three years, and that what didn’t work in 2011 may work now.

That said, I can understand why BiblioCrunch pivoted and I don’t think the situation has changed all that much. To put it simply, authors who don’t need any guidance don’t need a marketplace,and those who do need guidance need more than a marketplace.

I am not a book author but I can see both paths, in fact. If I wanted to find people to hire to help finish my book, I wouldn’t need a marketplace or listing service; I would ask the dozen or so indie authors I know for referrals.

But in all honesty, I might still sign up for BiblioCrunch (after asking for opinions on the value of the service).The option of pestering someone with questions could well be worth the $120 a year.

Tell me, have you tried either service?

We won’t know their true measure until after indie authors try them and comment. Speaking of which, if you would like to pen a guest post on your experiences with Feedsy, drop me a line. If you have something to say, I have a soapbox.

Ask any author and they’ll tell you that getting noticed is difficult. Whether it’s bookstores or ebookstores, getting and keeping the attention of potential buyers can be tricky, and this truism extends to the library ebook market as well.

And that’s where BiblioBoard and Library Journal come in. Today they are announcing the launch of Self-e, a new discovery service that is designed to help librarians find good self-published ebooks.

Using Self-e’s submission portal, authors can submit their self-published ebooks for review by Library Journal. The ebooks will be put through a comprehensive curation process where LJ will evaluate and select the most interesting titles. The ebooks will be made available to libraries via BiblioBoard in curated genre collections that participating public libraries can make available to their patrons all over the United States.

This is as much a distribution deal as it is discovery, so I think it is worth noting that this is not quite the same deal as what Smashwords and OverDrive announced earlier this week. BiblioBoard operates under ReadersFirst principles, which in this case means that the ebooks will be available to library patrons without limit or the need to check out or return a title.

As a user, I like this plan, but this might not appeal to all authors. Fortunately Self-e is nonexclusive, giving authors the option of also distributing through Smashwords or other platforms.

There’s no cost to the author, and any title not accepted for the curated collections can still be submitted for the localized state modules with other local authors. Library Journal will not curate these modules, but will be offering them in order to provide libraries with an opportunity to highlight  ebooks by local authors.

Self-e is available today, and the first collections are set to be released early next year.

Here’s a piece of news that has me scratching my head this morning.

eMusic, one of the original online music retailers, has merged with K-NFB, the parent company of the Blio ebook platform. There’s been no formal announcement but last night the WSJ posted a copy of the email that eMusic sent to their partners (copied at the end of this post). The exact terms have not been disclosed, but the 2 companies will be collectively known as Media Arc.

This is one of those stories that makes little sense at first glance and makes even less sense when I look into the details.

One company in this deal is a music retailer, while the other is a tech company that develops spoken word reading apps for the visually disabled. Or at least that is what the K-NFB website says today, though perhaps their public face doesn’t match their activities anymore.

Sure, K-NFB developed the tech that supports Blio, a rich-text ebook format what was supposed to take the market by storm in 2010, but until yesterday Blio had been managed and promoted by Baker & Taylor. I was also under the impression that all the content deals for Blio were run through B&T, not K-NFB.

But it looks like I could be wrong. The announcement implies that K-NFB has the distribution rights to 600k ebook titles. If that is the case then we could be looking at a shift in focus; K-NFB could be planning to stop making accessibility apps and and turn to be a content distributor/retailer like eMusic.

I have contacted K-NFB and B&T for comment, and I will update this post with more info when I get it.

Update: I have a response from B&T.

While KNFB has merged with eMusic to form Media Arc, there will be no change in the relationship with KNFB and Baker & Taylor.  We will continue to support the Blio reader by providing ebooks in the Blio format for our retail, OEM and library customers.  Axis 360, B&T’s premier digital content management platform for libraries, will continue to provide the Blio reader free to the library’s patrons and provide ebooks in the Blio format.

Here is the email:

EMUSIC AND K-NFB MERGE TO FORM MEDIA ARC, INC.
03/18/2013

Dear eMusic Partner, We are excited to announce today the merger of eMusic and K-NFB Reading, Inc. (d/b/a Blio, Inc.) into a single company called Media Arc, Inc., which will offer a comprehensive source of more than 17 million songs, 40,000 audio books and 600,000 eBooks. Both eMusic and K-NFB will remain as operating units of Media Arc, Inc.

As a new company, eMusic and K-NFB will leverage their combined technologies and expertise to create a consumer-centric interface that makes discovering, interacting with, and purchasing all kinds of media content more accessible and seamless for consumers. The goal is to be able to sell more content for our partners by providing electronics manufacturers, retailers, MVPD/wireless companies, and others with a multimedia content solution to better compete in today’s market.

Media Arc’s mission is to provide the best digital media discovery experience possible by leveraging cross-content insights to recommend new music and books to avid readers and music collectors alike. This will present both authors and artists with a unique opportunity to expand their fan base, reach new audiences, and of course sell more content. Founded by Futurist Ray Kurzweil with financial backing from former Microsoft CFO Michael Brown and media distribution giant Baker & Taylor, Blio, Inc. has built one of the most technologically advanced e-readers on the market. eMusic is a pioneer of the digital music space, with roots in helping music fans discover their next favorite artist or album dating back to 1998.

This next device isn’t quite as sophisticated as the book and ebook vending machines made by major manufacturers, or the POD setups like the Espresso Book Machine, but it is cool nonetheless. Quill & Quire reported earlier this week about a new piece of equipment which was recently installed in a Toronto-based bookstore.

The Monkey’s Paw bills itself as “Toronto’s most idiosyncratic second-hand bookshop", so it should come as no surprise that this bookstore has a one-of-a-kind book machine. The Biblio-mat was built by Craig Small, a friend of shop owner Stephen Fowler, and it dispenses books when customers put in $2.

The books dispensed by the machine were picked at random by Stephen, and were largely drawn from the books which would have been found in the $1-a-book bargain basket sitting out in front of most used bookstores.

Stephen sees the machine more as an art project than as a practical revenue generator, which is fitting for a store with window displays aimed to startle unassuming pedestrians and a collection of insect taxonomies on display. It’s still in beta, and with a couple exceptions customers' responses have generally been positive. "Of the people who have used the thing so far, almost every person has been pleasantly surprised and completely amused," Stephen said. "I can think of two people who were dissatisfied with the book they got, but I can only assume they were people lacking in imagination and enthusiasm. In fact, this is something I’ve observed in the used-book trade: people are always looking for meaning. They’ll get a book and feel as though it was psychically selected for them."

via Quill & Quire

Yet another company announced today that they’ve launched an iPad app and are selling ebooks, following in the footsteps of well, just about everyone.

As boring as that sentence sounds I think it is worth a second look. Rather than charging a subscription, like The British Library, or charging for individual titles (like most every ebookstore), BiblioLabs is selling collections focused on specific topics.

The app in question is BiblioBoard, and it’s based in part on the the work that BiblioLabs put into developing a similar app for The British Library. And in what I’m sure is not a coincidence, a lot of the content also appears to be drawn from TBL. It comes with 3 free collections and you can buy more collections for $16 each.

You can find the app in iTunes, and later this year the content should also be available online in most web browsers.

BiblioBoard offers more than 70 niche collections with titles like American Slave Narratives: A Historical Collection ,Fairy Tales: Favorite Tales From Around the Globe, The Olympic Games: A Historical Collection, and Myths and Legends: Stories from Around the World.  The 3 free titles  are focused on castles, railroading, and adventures on the high seas.  The content looks to be scanned PDF, not any true ebook format,and it can be downloaded to your iPad (this is important to me so I did check). The app also offers the ability to share excerpts via email, Facebook and Twitter.

I used to be a hobbyist historian, and when you combine that with what I do for a living I’m sure you can understand why I am interested in this app. But what really caught my eye was the content being sold as a set. BiblioLabs is pitching it as "an entire curated universe of historical artifacts for the price of a single paperback book", and once you get past the exaggeration, there is some value to the idea.

And it’s not one I’ve seen before. I can only recall seeing individual titles sold, like the consumer retail model, or access sold via a subscription, similar to the academic library model, so this hybrid approach is something new. Of course, BiblioLabs  is selling collections of content they don’t own, so my enthusiasm is tempered by their chutzpah.

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BiblioCrunch, a 9-month-old self-pub site, is taking a turn for the better this week.

The site was launched in August of 2011 by Miral Sattar, former digital project developer at Time, and it has always had the goal of helping authors create their own ebooks. But as of today the focus has shifted from helping the authors make the ebooks themsleves to connecting the self-pub authors with professionals who can assist the authors in producing, promoting, and distributing their ebooks.

"With the BiblioCrunch ebook services marketplace, the book publishing process becomes seamless and easy," said BiblioCrunch CEO Miral Sattar. "With our platform, users will have access to high quality ePublishing professionals from around the world to create the best books. "

The relaunched BiblioCrunch now offers creators the option of choosing from a catalog of more than 500 professionals who offer a range services to produce, support and sell ebooks. Authors can upload their source manuscript for free and create an ebook in several formats (Kindle, Epub, PDF). While creation is free, BiblioCrunch  does keep a share of the ebooks sold via the onsite ebookstore. Authors can set their own price and earn 85% of the each sale. They also pay a small fee in order to get broader distribution through the major ebookstores like Amazon, B&N, Kobo and others.

With the relaunch comes several new ways for authors to interact with the pros. The can put the work they require out for bid or specify a budget. After a job is done authors can rate the quality of the work and service providers. BiblioCrunch also offers a secure payment system as well as a vetting service so authors will know that they’ll get the work they paid for. "We vet every e-book service provider who requests to join the service" said Sattar. "Our participating freelancers include ebook professionals with backgrounds from Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Harper Collins, Bloomsbury, Random House, Time Magazine, New York Times and several university presses.”

Toshiba has just unveiled their new ereader for the Japanese market, and it won’t be reading Epub.

The Bookplace DB50 is going to be a heavily modified 7″ tablet. It’ll have the same hi-res screen found on the NC and KF, along with Wifi, Bluetooth, and 8GB Flash storage. It looks to be running some disguised form of Linux or Android on a 1GHz Freescale CPU. The press release doesn’t give any hints about the OS, and that suggests that it’s not accessible. Pity.

Battery life is estimated at around 7 hours, and it ships on 10 February with  retail around $285.

The interesting detail today is that the DB50 is going to be tied to Toshiba’s ebookstore, Bookplace. That mkes the DB50 the first Blio ereader. Yes, Bookplace is Toshiba’s own rebranded Blio ebookstore (with round 50k titles).  The Japanese version obviously has different content than you can find in the US, but the format is the same. This thing reads Blio ebooks.

Hmm. I had been hoping that this format will simply die out. It’s not Epub and it’s not Kindle, so that makes it the red-headed stepchild of the ebook world. And yet it keeps sticking around. Between Axis360, the Blio compatible library ebook platform, and now the DB50, this format has lasted much longer than I expected.

I wonder if the DB50 will work with Axis360? I’m going to have to get one and find out.

Specs

• 7-inch color TFT LCD with 600×1,024 resolution and LED backlight (touchscreen)
• Freescale i.MX535 CPU (1.0GHz)
• 8GB memory
• 1GM RAM
• IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• 5 buttons: HOME, MENU, BACK, CONTINUE, VOLUME
• Bluetooth 2.1
• micro USB 2.0 slot, microSD slot
• mono speaker (for MP3 playback)
• 7.5 hours battery life
• size: 190×120×11mm, weight: 330g

I got an email this morning from Blio, and I had to pinch myself to make sure i wasn’t still alseep. The folks at Blio were happy to tell me that their new iOS app was now available in iTunes.

I had to pinch myself. This was an app that was supposed to come out in August of 2010. Yes, it’s 11 months behind. It’s been so long since this thing was supposed to be released that I had to actually go through my archives and look up the original release date.

I found my last post about the Blio iOS app (from June 2010), and I can’t believe how enthusiastic I was. Blio was a platform that had such great promise and it came to nothing.

Seriously, the Blio app doesn’t do anything special, and it reads its own funky format. It’s supposed to support TTS (it doesn’t). And it’s supposed to support a rich text format, but pretty soon so will everyone else (Epub3).

Back in 2010, Blio was the hot new thing. Now it is firmly in my "don’t even bother" category. It never lived up to the hype, and now that you have better alternatives it’s simply not worth the bother.

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