The Storyteller Society is a crowd-publishing company that brings together authors and readers to sell collections of short stories.
THAT SOUNDS NICE, BUT HOW DOES IT ACTUALLY WORK? 1. Authors electronically submit short stories to the Storyteller Society community. 2. Community members review and rate the stories on factors like “entertainment value” and “style.” 3. The system aggregates the best stories, which are later edited and combined by similar themes into Collections. 4. Collections are published through Amazon for Kindle.
Everyone involved in the creation of a Collection has an interest in its success, and is financially rewarded with each sale. Here are all the players: *Authors: The people with a great story to tell and the desire to share it with others. *Reviewers: The voice of our readers, these members review and vote on author stories. *Curators: The people who ultimately take the stories, edit them, and combine them into Collections to publish. *Readers: Kindle customers just waiting to hear great stories to be told. They are the purchasers of the product.
WHAT DOES THE FINAL PRODUCT LOOK LIKE? *eBooks; a Collection of approximately 15 short stories, for sale on Kindle. *Each story is written by a different author and is around 1500 words. *Collections are assembled from stories that have similar themes. Some examples:
-That Time My Boss Tried To Kill Me- (15 stories of the worst bosses ever, told by the employees who survived them)
-Please Don’t Hire Me- (15 stories of outrageous job interviews, told by the candidates who still don’t work there)
-Put On This Monkey Costume And Dance- (15 hilarious stories about jobs you’ll be glad you never had)
BUT HOW DOES IT ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY? The eBook product will be sold through the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. This platform offers publishing companies, a fast, easy, and free way to publish books worldwide on the Kindle and Kindle reading apps. And, of course, each eBook sold generates revenue.
BESIDES OUR MOMS, WHO CARES? eBooks aren’t new. Collections of stories by multiple authors aren’t new. So the question, your question, is who cares? The concept is fueled by the power of social commerce, a retail model that uses peer-to-peer communication to drive sales (Indvik, 2013). Our model is a subset of that concept, called “Participatory Commerce.” This is where consumers become involved directly in the production process through voting, funding and/or collaboratively designing products (Indvik, 2013). Some examples:
*Kickstarter: a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. People who back projects are offered tangible rewards and one of a kind experiences (Kickstarter, n.d.). *Threadless: an artist community where designs are put to a public vote. Based on the feedback, winning designs are printed on products and sold worldwide. (Chafkin, 2008). *Lending Club: a peer-to-peer lending platform that enables borrowers to obtain a loan, and investors to purchase notes. (Lending Club, n.d.).
Three things define why you should care about our model: 1. A Consumer-Led Process We are a publishing company that is driven by the Reviewers, the people who represent the consumer. They ultimately decide what consumers want to read by choosing which topics are interesting and which author’s best represent those topics. Rather than publishing a book and then trying to find people to buy it, the consumers are telling us what they want to read and we are publishing to fill that need. 2. A Crowd-Sourced & Crowd-Rewarded System There is a similar theme with other Participatory Commerce companies; the consumer generally only gets involved in one of two ways. Either they pay to play (as in, they financially fund the project) or they play for fun (for free, because they enjoy the process). You see both of these in the examples above. But what if you turned that model upside down, and paid the consumer for participating? This is the real innovation in our concept, and we’ll cover it in more depth in the “Innovation” section of this application. 3. Big Mouths Sell Books How many times have you read a book because someone recommended it to you? Would you say you are more likely to read something based on a personal recommendation? 84% of all consumers would (Nielsen, 2013). Now imagine that instead of one Author trying to sell their eBook through their personal networks, there are fifteen. Now add on all the Reviewers who worked on a Collection and will make money each time it sells. Suddenly the word-of-mouth reach is multiplied by 100. The way this works is covered in more depth in the “Innovation” section of this application.
