From Manuscript to Digital Masterpiece: How to Publish your book as an NFT

Most of us expect that writing a book is hard work. Fewer may know that publishing can also be remarkably challenging. Yesterday we had 3 main options: Traditional, Self and Professional publishing:

1. Traditional publishing can be expensive, take multiple years and the publisher will likely take ownership of all content in perpetuity.?
2. Self-publishing isn’t an option for newcomers, we end up hiring a series of vendors to “self” publish and manage multiple moving parts. The upside for the author is retaining ownership of their content.?
3. Professional publishing such as Scribe Media offer a middle ground approach: more efficient and less costly than traditional publishing while also ensuring the author retains ownership and control of content.

Today authors are at a unique precipice; a literary revolution in the digital world. We have the option to manage ownership and follow-on value by releasing our books as a non-fungible token (NFT).

Clearly a powerful concept, but how does one go about getting it done?

This paper provides my first hand account of working with Alexandria Labs and the release of my book, Wealthcare: Demystifying Web3 and the Rise of Personal Data Economies as an NFT.

A book about the role of Web3 in the transformation of Health may be a natural fit for releasing it as an NFT but all authors and readers benefit.?

Authors benefit from almost instant payments rather than months. Even resales can be specified to return royalties into perpetuity. Authors can also specify a wide range of conditions to limited quantities and separate editions of their work. Special features such as author hour meetings, book groups, or merchandise can be built in.?

Readers also benefit. With traditional forms of ebooks, readers only have access as long as the hosting service continues to host the book. If Kindle or Amazon ceased operation, our access to our books on their platforms would end. With Blockchain-based solutions, the link never breaks. Alexandria works hard to ensure that their books are safe forever. IPFS is a decentralized storage solution for the book files (with no central server that could “go down”), and Lit Protocol helps encrypt the books in such a way that Alexandria or any publisher could disappear and the books would still be readable.

Here’s the 4 step process:

Step one: Get started.

Arrange a quick call to introduce your book to the intake team member at Alexandria labs. Assuming a good fit is determined, the author then provides a digital copy of the content. In this case, a google docs version did the trick. No contract needed–when books are published with smart contracts, payments and IP are transparent and protected right there in the technology.

Step two: Select distinct cover art.

The team generated a small selection of options. We chose the spikey geographic columns that suggest “we can build more together”. The art is a strong contrast from the book on Amazon and worthy of the collector-piece ethos of NFT ownership.

Step three: set up the author’s Wallet

The next step, the author’s meta mask wallet. Here again, the process was flawless (with some help). Soon a twelve-word security phrase was in hand with a wallet address ready to transact in ETH payments. Publishing to the chain would cost a certain amount of ETH, so we deposited enough to cover costs.?

It’s important to note that readers buying the books don’t need to have a crypto wallet (they can sign in with their emails and a wallet and profile is created for them).?

Step four: Specify conditions for the smart contract

The software magic of Alexandria labs provides a simple dashboard of attributes for the first release as an NFT:

• Maximum # of copies = I chose 100.
• Author Copies to reserve to gift to colleagues = I chose 10 for the colleagues that contributed to my web3 learnings. I am forever grateful!
• Resale percentage = I chose 10%. NFTs make this the first time ever that authors can benefit from second hand sales.
• Chain = I chose Ethereum because this is a special first edition of the book.?

Note that the platform, Alexandria, doesn’t charge upfront, but instead they take a commission of 15% on each NFT sale.

What happens next? My own smart contract was created from the Alexandria smart contract factory, complete with my specifications. Note: I can pause mint and change the price if I choose at any time; I am the administrator and hold ultimate control.

And voila that’s it… 100 immutable NFT’s available to mint.

Again, readers can buy them with a credit card and sign in with an email. No crypto onboarding required. If readers sell the books secondhand, they can sell them on OpenSea.

What are the downsides?

Since Ethereum transitioned to PoS, the environmental impact has shrunk dramatically. Perhaps the only downsides to books as NFTs on Ethereum relate to gas fees (blockchain processing fees) for both publishing and purchasing a book. Gas fees can vary wildly; it cost about $300 to deploy my book collection to the blockchain at the time I published it, and purchasing my books can cost readers $10-30 or more in gas. This is par for the course when publishing with Ethereum. Writers might consider using other blockchains if they want to significantly reduce gas fees (Polygon, a low-gas option, is a great choice and it is available on Alexandria).?

Writing the code for the smart contract can be anxiety-producing. Any bugs missed will be difficult to correct after going live. This is important to keep in mind if you are writing your own code or building your own book NFT platform.

Notably, NFT marketplaces are still young, niche markets. Mass book markets still migrate to traditional e-commerce of Amazon, Walmart, Target.?

However, the literary world is pioneering a new paradigm.

Today more authors are embracing change, embracing technology and embracing the future. We no longer simply share our stories, we shape the destiny of our content in new ways. The scarcity and uniqueness of NFTs enhance the perceived value of a traditional book and digital enthusiasts drive up demand. This new found value attracts attention from literary agents, publishers and even traditional media outlets.?

In short, I hope you found this stepwise approach helpful and will soon join the list of authors and creators alike leveraging the seemingly limitless potential of NFTs.