[Publisher] BOOKaBOOK

Anybody come across this site before based in the Netherlands. It offers a scheme where users are invited to buy 1000 shares of a book for 15 euro's each, and thereby profit when Bookabook publish it for sale. The whole concept looks highly unusual and their percentages and share payments to shareholders of books just doesnt add up.

There are very few book listings and the site looks distinctly unprofessional and filled with typographical mistakes and poor image clarity.

Any experiences?

http://www.bookabook.nl/

The Kallista Blog did a posting on them last month.

I think the basis of this is deeply unsound. If you can get 1000 shares in a book sold at 15 euro, it begs the question what would an author be doing waisting their time with a site and idea like this. I'd rather have 1000 books sold with 1 euro each on royalties in my back pocket than go for a scheme like this. It also seems to me that the people buying the shares are the very people you'd want buying the book. It's like a double whammy!

The lack of take-off of the site suggests to me it won't be around too much longer, and yes, I do suspect there's a get rich quick smell about this for the administrators and owners of the site.

At 15000 euro takings per book, potentially, considering it costs about 100 euro to set up with Lightning Source--the only people making something on this are bookabook at 60% for their sales on each copy.

There's also something more of the 'pyramid' scam in all this too. Get as many people involved, investing just a 'small' amount and structure it so the money flows to the person at the top of the pile. Unfortunately -here- that ain't the author!