NFT eBooks Can Actually Be Pretty

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NFT eBooks Can Actually Be Pretty Cool

BY WYATT BANDT

Love it or hate it, it didn’t take long for NFTs to make their way into publishing. The funny monkeys herald the new frontier: NFT eBooks. This new market provides exciting creative and financial opportunities for authors, while readers have a new way to read and get exclusive material found nowhere else.

For the skeptics—and I was one of them—there are several things that make NFT eBooks stand out from regular eBooks. Despite a natural predilection toward disliking gambling, crypto, and reading digitally, there is something cool about NFT eBooks, or the good ones at least.

For one, you actually own it. Not the copyright to the item, but the copy of the eBook. If you’re a reader, once you’re done with it, you can choose to sell it at a potential profit, all thanks to the way blockchain works. But this is the boring part.

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What’s cool about them is that they are designed to be novelty items. The ‘good’ NFT eBooks are packed to the brim with exclusives not found in other print or digital versions such as animated covers, author interviews, original art pieces, or video and audio files. They’re often bundled with other books too, either an author’s entire collection of a complete series all in one, convenient place. So, even if the book you may already know and love, it provides something new to those willing to purchase it. Creating these additional artefacts takes a little more effort from authors, but it makes the eBook stand out from its contemporaries.

Another exciting thing for authors is that NFT eBooks provide more resale income. With Amazon eBooks, an author makes a max of 70% on commissions, while the NFT eBook site BooksGoSocial.com has a royalty rate of 85% and the author gets a micro-payment of 10% each time their book is traded. This extra bit of income is a major draw for many, and though the market is small, there is room for growth.

Finally, NFTs limited ‘print runs’ can give them the same value as one of Magic: the Gathering’s Alpha Black Lotuses, with one selling in January 2021 for over half a million dollars. At least, it theoretically can have that value, if the demand for the item is high enough. Some readers may enjoy chasing that dragon, hoping that their eBook will become hot and they can sell it at a profit. If an author gets lucky and their eBook takes off, those 10% payments can quickly add up. That said, gambling inherently comes with risks, and it may not be wise to approach NFT eBooks with a stock market mindset.

A CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC

All that said, there are some concerns surround NFTs, ones more valid than people simply claiming that it’s a passing fad.

The U.S. Treasury published a study in February 2022 that speaks about how NFT platform could easily become an avenue for money laundering and terrorist financing. Though this isn’t an immediately problem, there is a lot of room for it to go south. As we’ve seen with cryptocurrency, with one blockchain company reporting that criminals laundered $8.6 billion of cryptocurrency in 2021. It’s something that makes me raise an eyebrow, though I’m not sure criminals will be using eBooks as their mules anytime soon when other avenues seem to be much easier.

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Additionally, NFTs have an environmental impact as many of them are traded on networks such as Etherium. Etherium transactions have a mining process, and each transaction takes energy, in turn increasing carbon emissions. With this in mind, the more popular NFTs become, the worse they are for the environment unless clean energy alternatives for them are found.

Finally, NFTs can be easily copied, reproduced, and pirated. Yes, the new items won’t have the same non-fungibleness as the original, but some people don’t care; they will simply enjoy having a copy of an NFT eBook so they have something to read without any plans of reselling it. With the current glut of piracy sites that exist, NFTs are just another product to exploit, and their digital nature makes it easier to copy than an item that’s only seen print. It’s a natural thing to worry about, especially as a creator.

ZIPPING UP

I once saw someone describe NFTs and crypto described as “Mary Kay for men,” and while that gets a chuckle out of me, there is something interesting about them. It is a new, exciting market that gives authors a chance to get more money from sales and make something special. It gives readers a cool item that they were willing to spend the money one, disregarding the potential for flipping it.

While NFT eBooks are a burgeoning market, if an author is looking for another way to get a unique experience into the hands of their readers, NFT eBooks may be worth exploring.

As a reader, I don’t see myself buying one anytime soon. I prefer my books in print, and I don’t care about digital collectibles. But if done right, I think that an NFT eBook can totally be worth the money as a stand-alone product.

NFT EBOOK AUTHOR Q&A

I met with a few authors who have branched out and begun selling their books as NFTs: Conor Kostick (CK), an author of history and fiction who mainly writes in the genre of LitRPG, and Caitlyn Lynagh (CL), author of the Soul Prophecies Series. They answered a few questions I had about NFT eBooks and what prospecting authors may want to know about them.

What made you want to start selling your book(s) as NFT eBooks?

CK: I had no intention of selling books as NFT eBooks because of the environmental

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harm of many forms of blockchain. Also, some NFTs have an aspect of a pyramid scheme about them. Then I read in a BooksGoSocial newsletter about carbon neutral blockchains and that made me think again. If I'm simply trying to reach readers and give them good value in access to my books, rather than create an artefact with a goal of it becoming a hot, tradeable commodity that might cause someone to lose money, then an NFT is just another tool to connect writers and readers, and it’s one that has some unique benefits.

CL: As an artist, I was curious about NFTs but never realised NFT Books were an option until last spring when Laurence O’Bryan from Books Go Social emailed me to ask if I wanted to get involved in an NFT store he was setting up.

I jumped at the chance. It was a learning curve for all the authors, but I was pleased the idea worked.

What are the benefits for you, an author, to sell your book as an NFT?

CK:: The main benefit is that you can get resale income. In the world of physical books, authors get nothing from the second-hand trade, but with NFTs, you can get something (in my case 10%). Another benefit for some is being able to create the NFT as an interesting bundle for the reader. Assuming you have all the rights, you could not only make a package of eBooks but also audiobooks and other digital content. And then there is the chance that your NFT becomes a tradeable item, not for the content per se but as a collectable item, like a rare, signed first edition of a book. At least if your NFT did become collectable, you'd share in the growth of value. Also, the more ways in which your books are available the better, we live in a frail world where there can be sudden tectonic changes to the commercial landscape and it's not a good idea to be entirely dependent on just one giant online merchant or one physical distributor.

CL: Well, to be honest, the money might not be life-changing, but the concept itself is exciting. It gives a chance to be more open with one reader. It also gives an opportunity to incorporate other creative ideas into a unique package. It’s something I now keep in mind when writing new books.

What can an author do to make their NFT eBook stand out? (E.g., What can you do to make readers more interested in it than, say, a regular eBook? What do you do to stand out in the NFT area, which is

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blowing up so fast?)

CK: I think it's important that the person who buys the NFT gets worthwhile content. Unlike a lot of NFTs, a bookbased NFT actually does have an intrinsic and measurable value. I don't think authors should try to get in on the goldrush style of NFT. Rather, we should offer books and audio that readers can genuinely enjoy in their own right. Then even if the currency value of the NFT drops, there is no real loss to the owner, who still has the content they want.

In this spirit, I made a twenty-minute video discussing the inner connections of the universe of Epic, Saga, Edda, and the Eternal Voyager series, and this video will always be exclusively for the NFT purchaser. At its current price of $24.99 for 5 eBooks and 3 audiobooks, plus the video (and I threw in some wrap-around cover art), I think I've created an NFT that works in its own right as really good value and that's the best way to stand out among the tsunami of NFTs.

Having said that, I think writers should remember that an NFT is not a book and not be lazy about the image. Since NFTs can have moving covers, yours will look more credible and valuable with a bit of effort (e.g., an animation). CL: I’m forever impressed by the ideas of authors. At first, authors were making alternative covers (often animated) and writing in a dedicated foreword. In my case, I painted a new cover on canvas. It might not have looked quite as professional as digital art but was fun to do. I then destroyed the original artwork. I also added the audio of a song to accompany one of my NFTs. Many authors also include videos explaining the ideas behind their books.

How do you promote your NFT eBooks? What platforms do you market them on?

CK: The market for NFT books is still small, so I haven't invested a lot of promotion time or resources on mine. It's discovered via the BooksGoSocial website, which I sometimes mention in my social media and marketing. Anyone searching for an NFT of my books would find it right away so that probably accounts for the occasional sale. That's it for my marketing, but of course owners of the NFT can try to resell it via their own marketing.

CL: I was lucky with BooksGoSocial as both my NFTs sold within 24 hours. I refused to sell the NFTs as limited editions, only a one-off special edition. I think readers like that idea more, and it’s in

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keeping with the NFT ethos. I don’t like the idea of multiple sales, it undermines an NFT to me, it’s just a digital limited edition.

Is it hard to convert a book to an NFT eBook?

CK: It's fairly easy. You can mint them yourself, just search and you'll find dozens of platforms for creating NFTs out of books. There are different models for paying the platform (e.g., each time you mint an NFT or a one-off fee setting up the account). In my case, for a small commission to BooksGoSocial, I handed over all the files and they arranged the minting and managed the reselling, etc.

I think the main hiccup for authors is that most minting platforms aren't geared up to handle the common files for books. They are more oriented to visual images and audio files. So if you are doing this yourself, you'll probably end up creating a .zip file for upload with PNG images of your pages. Or you can put links into the NFT that allow the reader to unlock the books, but I don't like this solution so much. It's a lot quicker, but the purchaser doesn't have the same sense of owning a unique artefact.

CL: Thankfully BooksGoSocial sorted out the minting for me, otherwise I would have been lost. I get how it works in principle but not the mechanics of setting them up.

What is your favorite thing about NFT eBooks?

CK: As a reader, I haven't purchased one yet! I think I might if it was something I wanted to hold on to for a long time. An Ursula Le Guin NFT of all her books would be fabulous. As a writer, it's the knowledge that I (or my family if it happens after my death) will share in any future growth in value of the NFT. I've a couple of books of mine on Abe Books, for example, listed at over $200. I get nothing from their sale. Some authors have books listed for over $100,000. At least with an NFT, the creator gets a small return when collectors think their work valuable.

CL: The fact that they are unique editions. I think they can be collectable and also an investment. My worry is that there seems to be a glut of them.

I’m getting involved in a project called the Logged Universe, which is a series of NFT short science fiction stories – a bit like an ongoing series of Black Mirror, but NFT stories written by individual authors. I’m looking forward to doing that as it’s a different spin on the concept. 