In an earlier article I wrote about the unprecedented decline of our world-wide book industry and how it’s now high time for a new book-industry model to come about that would allow all book retailers, publishers and authors to co-exist in a much more equitable environment. I also introduced a very basic concept of such a new book-industry model called, Bibliosity.
Bibliosity has been put on hold because of the Covid-19 pandemic and will undergo a soft-launch early in 2022. It is a concept (website) that has been in development for approximately nine years by us, Starburst Publishing Pty Ltd – a small publishing company. The reason we spent such a long time on this project is simply that we didn’t have much of a resource base – and still don’t! Nevertheless, these last nine years have been very productive in that it’s given us time and the opportunity to fully develop this unique concept that will in turn allow Bibliosity to help many authors, publishers and book retailers nationally and internationally.
Simply put, Bibliosity will allow book-store and newsagent retailers to acquire a free online Limited Franchise with Bibliosity (A sale-able & transferable Franchise; and, Limited because it’s online only) that will exponentially set the scene for a large network of online Franchisees (retailers) to become more than competitive with corporations like Amazon, Google and Barnes & Noble, etc., to name just a few. Book retailers will then be able to sell their book products, including eBooks, online where they simply haven’t had the opportunity to compete against the sociopathic control patterns of some of these ruthless corporations. By forming into a much larger collective network group, our online Bibliosity Franchisees will then also have the combined bargaining power to negotiate prices directly with publishers and authors world-wide, instead of having to unfairly compete with these ruthless middlemen corporations. This of course sets the scene for a much more equitable environment that throws a mighty big lever in favour of book retailers, publishers and authors!
Bibliosity has additionally come up with a competitive edge that will capably tackle the eReader ‘Vendor Lock-in’ monopoly of corporations; as with Amazon, for instance, with their Kindle eReader – and NO you won’t need to ‘Jailbreak’ your eReader device either! This sets the scene for all of our Bibliosity Franchisees to competitively sell eBooks online (Bibliosity eBooks that will exponentially increase in volume over time as more and more publishers and authors join) and where customers, either through their residing postcode or their favourite or local Bibliosity Franchisee who will in turn receive the 37% retail mark-up for any such eBooks sold via their customer base.
In needs to be kept in mind though that initially only a limited number of free Franchises will be available with Bibliosity. We estimate that presently there is room for about 250 to 300 online Franchises before we need to start doing some serious upgrading on our software and online operating capabilities, which of course means spending money. Even though we will be charging only a small & fixed administration fee on every online transaction (4.5%), we cannot predict at this stage how much will be spent in the future on upgrades. Hence we can only promise that the first 300-odd Franchises will be for free with no deposit or initial set-up fees whatsoever. I guess this truly is a limited offer, and we would seriously recommend all book retailers to join as soon as possible. Any early and serious inquiries from book retailers will be put at the head of our list!
We would also once again like to ask the internet community to help us with Bibliosity in its quest to allow all authors, publishers and book & magazine retailers to financially coexist on a much more equitable and sustainable level and, through our blog, help them all to become aware and get in touch with us – any such guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Peter W. Whitewood