The writing's on the wall.

You know I'm writing a book, right? You've obvoiusly read my early exploits here. Books are uncomplicated - words; in paragraphs; to form chapters - simples. Well, you'd be surprised how much more complicated modern authorship has become, especially if you're managing it yourself (i.e. self-publishing). Let's think through this a little:

  • You have to write the book (which means notes and some tool to write in - they may not be the same thing). Chances are you'll do this on a laptop, but you may also need something on your phone or ipad, in case inspiration strikes while 'on the go'.
  • You'll need to publish the book, and manage that process. That probably meansventuring into ebook publishing spaces (Amazon's Kindle ecosystem being the obvious big player here). You may also want to setup print-on-demand paper copies and list them for sale on various market places.
  • You'll need artwork for the book (even if it's just the cover).
  • You'll want to market the book both before it's out and once it's available for purchase. This could be through social media marketing and campaigns (twitter, facebook); paid advertising (google, amazon); videos (youtube); Q&A (quora); a dedicted website (or one for you as an author); etc.
  • You'll want to keep track of sales and promotions once it's live and people are reading it.
  • You'll want to engage with readers on various platforms (twitter, facebook, instagram) to build a following.

All in all, lots of things to think about, and lots of tools and ecosystems to interact with. Given that I'm just beginning this journey for myself, it struck me as quite disjointed and complicated, which led to the brainwave of how this might be made more simple for the aspiring self-publisher. Surely there's a way to streamline some of this and help them with the myriad of toolsm sites and interfaces they need to deal with?

The 'dashboard'

I love < a href="https://momentumdash.com/" target="_blank">Momentum, and have it as the default new tab page on my Chrome browser, aswell as pinning it as the first tab on my screen. I live in Chrome, and often have lots (and lots) of tabs open so having things like a todo list and clock to hand all the time (and reminders when I open a new tab that I have more important things to be doing) is super useful.

What if there was a similar thing, aimed specifically at authors. Which included things like their twitter feed (so they could see and respond to fan comments easily); a live view of their amazon sales; a way to update thier facebook page and wordpress blog (maybe even reusing the same content); and a way to jot notes which might synch to their preferred tool (evernote maybe?) whenever an idea strikes them.

Sounds interesting you say? Well, that's the elevator pitch in a nutshell. We're going to build a chrome extension (maybe Firefox too, eventually) that interacts with a few external services and gives the aspiring (or highly succesful) author a one-stop window into their publishing world. We'll start simple - maybe just as a read-only view onto a few of the interesting things that authors like to keep track of - and then add functionality over time. We're also toying with the idea of there being a way for people to contribute 'modules' to the dashboard to build a bit of a community around it.

Moneization (yes, that's why we're here, this isn't a humanitarian effort) could be interesting. Typically in this space it's a freemium/paid model. Free basic dashboard, paid for - often subscription based - premium dashboard with extra features. We could look at that - maybe you get twitter and amazon for free and if you want to plug into your facebook pages, or a wix website then that's a couple of dollars a month?

All to be determined. For now we have the skeleton of an idea, and need to do some more research:

  • Will people pay for it?
  • What kind of integrations would be useful?
  • How feasible are this integrations?
  • Can we come up with a compelling design?
  • How do you even build a browser extension
  • Should this be one of the areas where we outsource the work, rather than taking on another dev project (interesting thought...)?

Stick with us as we take this to the next stage and decide if it has any legs and how we might get it off the drawing board (or in this case, out of my big ugly head) and into the browser (if you see what I mean).

Top Tip

“Every school-age kid should be taught about compounding as soon as they can understand it”

Me wishing he could educate his younger self