Frankly, the quality of the writing on the site - the blog posts, not the sample book -
is also a huge turn-off. The cutesy spelling of "boox" and "worx" also grate on my nerves.
I agree.
I'm not Annilyn, but I'm going to respond to this.
This is an early stage start-up.
Some technology is involved that will push visibility, but, as for all budding start-ups, there is no absolute guarantee of success and, at such an early stage, many avenue are being explored.
Many other display sites have arrived with claims of being able to make writers' work more visible, but none have succeeded in any significant degree. If you have the technology to do this you're onto a winner. How is it that you've stumbled across the secret?
The publishing world is in a stage of self-redefinition and, though experience with existing models is indeed invaluable,
I've worked in publishing for nearly thirty years now and in all that time it's been in a state of change. And while you might be trying to discount the importance of experience with existing models there, I'm convinced that it's better than no experience at all.
What experience of trade publishing do you have?
5 years ago, pundits were adamants that ebooks would never be more than a short lived fad. I think you wil agree that they have been proven wrong.
Then you think wrong (you spell wrong, too--just a heads-up).
Pundits (whoever they are) might have said five years ago that ebooks were a short-lived fad, but trade publishing has been serious about them for a long time now. Some of the biggest trade publishers have been publishing interactive e-books since the 1990s; I was working on something similar in the late 1980s.
GoodReads was created by Otis Chandler, a software engineer alien to the world of publishing, who wanted to"to help people find and share books they love" ,yet, despite his unfamiliarity with the publishing/library world, GoodReads success is nothing short of stellar.
GoodReads was primarily aimed at readers: it's not a display site or a publishing service, so it has very little to do with the site you're promoting here, and to introduce it like this is akin to running around the forums slapping everyone about with a soggy red herring.
Ourboox declared aim is to create a community of writers and publishers to create books together. The technology involved is developped by a sofware engineer, not a publisher. The founder is a children book writer, not a publisher. Current Beta users are writers and illustrators.
So now Ourboox is a community as well as a publisher and a promotional tool? Blimey. It must be like the Tardis in there.
The platform is meant to serve writers and illustrators, not publishers, so as the interests are different from those of a publisher, a lot of experience from publishing industry is not relevant.
But in a previous post you said that Ourboox was a publisher. If that's the case, you are going to need to know about publishing. And yet you don't.
Does ourboox guarantee instant fame? No, nobody does.
Is there a chance that it will fail? Yes, there is.
There's more than a chance, in my view.
If it were only the founders of Ourboox who would suffer in the event of its failure I wouldn't give two hoots about it: but that failure is likely to take with it all the work that's been put up there. You're going to cost all sorts of writers a lot of heartache. Are you ok with that?
As with all start-ups, the chance of failure is considerable.
Is there a chance that it will make it? Yes, definitely.
It depends how you define "making it". I'm focusing mostly on how this will affect the writers and artists who work with the site; you seem to be mostly concerned with the people who have founded Ourboox.
What are the advantages of participating at an early stage? As with all successful start-ups, early adopters get a head start.
A head start on a site with very little profile, run by people with no history of writing success, no idea about publishing and no clue what they're doing.
What are the risks? Worse case scenario, it closes down
This is not the worst-case scenario. As I've said before, the writers and illustrators who post their work on your site might end up losing it all. No matter how your legal team writes the contract, if Ourboox ends up owing money to anyone, it's not only possible but probable that the work it contains could be held hostage until those debts are settled: and if they're not, those works will be gone for good.
Even if that doesn't happen, the first rights to all the works concerned will be gone which can mean that no other publishers will consider them. Which again results in those authors and artists losing their work.
and writings and illustrations can continue to pursue fame from other avenues.
If you're going to set up a site for writers at least write coherently. This makes you look amateurish. And "fame"? Really? Do you think that's what creative endeavours are about?
As ourboox does not require exclusivity, the only risk is to invest some time.
So, as risk is a little bit of time nil and potential for gain real, the choice is yours.
As I've already pointed out, this is a load of bunkum. Please stop making claims which are untrue.
Earlier you wrote that you consider an understanding of publishing to be irrelevant in these changing times. Perhaps if you had some of that irrelevant understanding you'd realise how many errors you're making.
Ourboox is not a good idea. It has great potential for harm, and little potential for success. Please reconsider before you go any further.
