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Startup idea: Turnkey self-publishing service for authors

12 点作者 jasoncrawford超过 13 年前

6 条评论

bravura超过 13 年前
Does anyone know about any ebook selling platforms that offer digital watermarking that uses steganography? i.e. to detect who has pirated your materials, via a secret message that dox'es the original purchaser.<p>I see no platform that will take your text (or PDF) and offer good watermarking. Or, for that matter, <i>any</i> watermarking besides a name and email on every page.<p>Name and email is easily defeated, because this is easily stripped.<p>A successful system would be a multi-pronged, steganographic watermark approach. The approach would, unfortunately, rely upon security by obscurity.<p>Whitespace approaches are good, but can be defeated by pdf2text followed by PDF creation. Nonetheless, they form a decent prong.<p>Additionally, there is a language-model (NLP) based approach based upon synonym substitution. Some common words can be replaced with synonyms without significantly altering the meaning of the text. So if word A has 8 replacements, I just added three bits to my secret message, the watermark. (I can't find the citation, sorry. If there is sufficient interest, I can dig it up. Or email me.)<p>Additionally, these approaches can be improved by adding error correction, in case there are minor modifications to the PDF.<p>As I said, these approaches are a weak form of security, but current approaches offer <i>no</i> security.<p>Exercise for the reader: If you can identify the pirate of your book, does this really matter? You can at best shame the pirate, but not undo their damage (widespread piracy), is my current understanding. Unless your technology is so good that, like Google with SEOs, people are sufficiently aware of your excellence that they are scared to even <i>dare</i> to try to beat you. Discuss.
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peterarmstrong超过 13 年前
This is basically what we've done with Leanpub, except we're entirely focused on ebooks. There's zero cost to use Leanpub; you write in Markdown on your computer, we sync with Dropbox and we generate PDF, ePub and MOBI with one click. The author gets 90% - 50 cent royalty. The only part that isn't turnkey right now is automated export to Kindle store and iBookstore, but we're working on that. (Right now you need to submit the Leanpub MOBI and ePub files yourself.) The cost to write a book should just be opportunity cost: an author shouldn't have to spend anything or give up any control in order to reach his or her audience...
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abhaga超过 13 年前
This has been available in form of CreateSpace, Lulu, FastPencil etc in USA for quite a long time. My own company, pothi.com provides a similar platform to Indian authors and to outside authors targeting Indian market.<p>I personally believe that future of a lot of traditional publishing companies is going to be of a curator working on top of such platforms. Even today many publishers depend on book packaging companies that take in the manuscript or even an outline and deliver the ready-to-print book.
bhewes超过 13 年前
I run a Literature in translation publishing company built on top of Ingram's Lighting Source. I also am deal with publishing issues at Los Angeles Review of Books. Few authors have any desire to self publish. The barrier to entry to write is so low there is tons of crap.<p>Look, what would be useful is new author discovery tools. Or anything that helps find talent. Or tools for independent publishers who are not tech savvy. Non cryptic book sales analytics. Easy to use EDI systems.
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keeptrying超过 13 年前
I'm building the other part of the equation, ie how to find and hire great editors and artists. Would you be interested in doing a skype call sometime?<p>I think if we can work together somehow we might be seriously able to make self publishing easier and Still facilitate high quality editing and art work.<p>I sent an email to Peter already and I'll send you an email tomorrow when I get up. Gnat. My email s in my profile.
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davidw超过 13 年前
I have some ideas along these lines with LiberWriter, but I'm pretty happy keeping it fairly niche.