For the longest time, centralized platforms such as Smashwords, Kindle, among others have dominated the publishing industry. While these platforms have been quite valuable to authors and publishers, readers are unable to secure true ownership and management rights over the digital assets they acquire. These centralized platforms also assume ownership over consumers, prohibiting authors from freely communicating with their audiences. On the other hand, authors seek fair compensation for their products and the ability to connect directly with their audiences. This has led to an increased need to create a digital asset ownership model that works for both creators and consumers. In this article, we explore how Book.io is applying blockchain technology to solve challenges in the publishing industry.
What is Book.io?
Over time, despite making reading more accessible and effective, digital publishing remains flawed due to a lack of true ownership for consumers and inadequate compensation for creators.. When readers purchase licenses to e-books, they gain access to the books, and a privilege to personalized use. They, however, lack certain rights, including transfer, resale, guaranteed permanent access, and the ability to modify and create derivative works. Book.io is a solution building on top of blockchain technology to help resolve most of these issues relating to ownership, control, and royalties.
What is https://t.co/9AI8q7BlAq? pic.twitter.com/kXZd5Zogo6
— Book.io (@book_io) December 13, 2022
Book.io is creating Decentralized Encrypted Assets (DEAs), that allow consumers to truly own their digital media while enabling creators to directly sell their work. DEAs include books, audio, music, and videos stored entirely on-chain, eliminating token-gated licensing alternatives. Every digital asset is represented on the blockchain as an NFT, a unique irreproducible token, that provides ownership verification, and automated royalties for the specific content. These assets are immutable, possess programmable capabilities, and are accessible solely to their designated owners.
This model ensures genuine ownership, enhanced security, and fair compensation for creators. It also integrates user-friendly onboarding and multi-chain interoperability, making it easier for users to access and manage their digital assets. This transition moves the digital media market from restrictive licensing to true digital ownership, fostering a more equitable and sustainable ecosystem for all
Book.io is a multi-chain company and allows authors and publishers to choose different chains for different specific needs. Currently Book.io has digital books on Algorand, Cardano, Ethereum, and Polygon. The $BOOK token is a native Cardano token.
Why use Book.io?
Over time, we’ve had three main eras of media ownership, where each has been associated with different pros and cons. The first was the physical media era, where consumers purchased and owned physical copies of media. We then moved to the digital licensing era where consumers purchase licenses with restricted ownership rights. Fast forward to today, through platforms like Book.io, we have blockchain-based ownership model, where consumers own digital assets recorded on the blockchain, giving this complete control and flexibility over their assets. But what exactly is the value proposition for this model? Let’s explore:
By decentralizing books and knowledge, they were making books unburnable, unchangeable, and unbannable.
Benefits to readers
- True ownership: Readers gain full access and complete control over a digital resource. It becomes more like physical ownership; there is no vendor control, and transferability is possible.
- Read-to-earn rewards: Readers are given incentives for engaging with digital content within the platform. The rewards could be in form of tokens, discounts, and exclusive NFT’s, among others.
- Secondary market freedom: Once a consumer purchases digital content, they gain resale rights, and peer to peer transaction is no longer limited. Book.io has an ecosystem that is compatible with other virtual markets, this enables users to list, and transfer digital resources as they would, physical ones.
- Decentralized storage: content in traditional digital platforms is mostly vulnerable to service outage, loss, and censorship. With the use of Book.io, digital content becomes a true assest to readers, even if the primary service were to be disrupted. This beats the traditional licensing models which are quite restrictive.
Benefits to authors and publishers
- Smart contracts: These are automatic, and programmable. The contracts file and verify proprietorship of digital resources, handle royalty distribution, manage the supply of collectible e-books.
- Non- censorship: Unlike in traditional digital platforms, once a resource has been stored on Book.io, removal, changes, or even bans are impossible.
- Direct audience engagement: Book,io enhances connections between authors and readers through interactive content. Reader feedback, reader badges, direct sales, giveaways, and community voting are some of the ways used to ensure interaction within the ecosystem.
Benefits to the publishing industry
- Sustainability: Traditional blockchains such as bitcoin, operate on massive energy, and computational power to maintain a network. Book.io on the contrary, applies the use of Cardano’s Proof-of-Stake model whose operational mechanism is entirely energy-efficient, ensuring technological, and environmental sustainability.
- Expanded revenue: With the absence of intermediaries, and the introduction of secondary markets, authors and publishers have a way of making more returns.
Comparing Book.io to Traditional Digital Book Platforms
Ownership models
While most traditional digital platforms follow the license model, Book.io gives true ownership to readers, eliminating a critical flaw that has shackled the digital industry for decades
Resale and transfer rights
Book.io permits free trade, introducing aftermarkets for digital content. Readers can list, transfer, or trade books with their peers, or on other platforms. In traditional digital book platforms, there is vendor control, books are made fast to the platform.
Royalty
With the absence of intermediaries in Book.io, royalties are expanded, and more transparent: there is fair, timely, and congruent compensation of authors and publishers. In traditional digital book platforms, sales are opaque and limited only to primary sales.
Future Plans in Book.io
Book.io has put in place an extensive roadmap outlining future developmental plans, some of which are already underway.
Upcoming developments
- Improved analytics: The platform intends to provide enhanced analytic tools to better address user needs. This includes tools to help authors follow up, and keep track of readers’ interaction with their resources for modification
- Lending libraries: Book.io aspires to create a passive income generating feature that allows for lending and rental of digital books, whilst sustaining ownership rights.
- Global accessibility: Appreciating Book.io’s value to its audience, the platforms is looking to diversify, and localize content for non English speakers beginning with Mandarin, and Spanish so as to expand its market.
Partnerships
- Multichain growth: Book.io plans on collaborating with other blockchains including Avalanche and Solana so as to enhance interoperability, which will significantly boost the liquidity of user assets and accessibility.
- Educational partnerships: Book.io aims to work jointly with educational institutions to provide blockchain verifiable textbooks. This program that will rationalize the issuance of academic content, consequently fostering trust in digital learning materials.
Worth a mention is the ₳2,000,000 proposal set to fully bring Book.io to Cardano. The project, recently supported by the wider Cardano community, has been funded through Project Catalyst’s Cardano Partners: Enterprise R&D category. With this funding, Book.io will solve the challenges associated with Cardano lacking a major intellectual property holder for digital media.
In the words of Book.io, “Lack of mainstream digital assets, such as eBooks and audiobooks, limits exposure to the average consumer and stifles the potential for Cardano to become a widely recognized platform for digital ownership. Bringing a major IP holder to the Cardano ecosystem would bridge this gap, introducing millions of assets and catalyzing blockchain adoption for the mainstream audience.”
Conclusion
Book.io hasn’t just provided a convenient digital publishing platform- it has proved to be a step towards democratizing knowledge. Readers who fancied liberation from the traditional license model, and authors who desired a better compensation are finally attaining what they very much yearned for. As the platform continues to grow, ownership of digital assets will improve and the Web3 community will enjoy more game-changing innovations.
