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Technology
Daily business news at www.biv.com October 18–24, 2011
Rhetorical devices 2.0 up books in chapters and really form anthologies of various kinds.” Bookriff provides a free platform f you have an iPod, chances are the music in your playlist is a col- to search for content, assemble it, lection of singles that you’ve either obtain rights from publishers, credownloaded individually or ripped ate a book – either in e-book or print format – make it available for sale in from a CD. But if you have an e-reader, you’re Bookriff’s online marketplace and pretty much stuck with a collection even market it through social media channels. of e-books in their entirety. The company is the brainchild That is about to change, thanks to Bookriff, a new digital publishing of Mark Scott, a former investment company that applies the practice banker and book collector who of “remixing” to the printed word bought D&M Publishers four years and allows virtually anyone to pub- ago. D&M has provided Bookriff lish an anthology of previously pub- with the startup funding to get it off the ground. lished work. As anyone who has backpacked “Bookriff is like iTunes for books,” said Rochelle Grayson, the through Europe can attest, carrying company’s co-founder and CEO. around half a dozen Lonely Plan“Bookriff allows consumers and et and Frommer’s guidebooks and publishers to take the book apart foreign language phrase books can into all its components, all its chap- be a pain. Scott often found himters, and remix it and resell that con- self wishing he could simply excerpt tent, either for personal purposes or the sections he wanted from travel guides and carry it all around in one for new audiences.” The idea behind Bookriff appeals “mixed” book while travelling. With so many books, magazine to Rowland Lorimer, director of the Master of Publishing program at articles and other kinds of content available either online or in ePub Simon Fraser University. “We’ve reached a stage in tech- format, that’s now possible. All that was1:49 missing was 1a simple program nology where it’s possible to divide FS11_VAN_9x7_BIV_Layout 1 07/10/11 PM Page
By Nelson Bennett
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to help people “curate” their own anthologies. Scott knew Grayson from a philosophy club they both belong to. He also knew she had the skills to develop a publishing platform. Grayson has an MBA in finance and business policy from the University of Chicago and worked in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. She started a blogging software company in the late 1990s, and teaches social media marketing at the University of British Columbia. Bookriff works with publishers to obtain permission to excerpt portions of copyrighted material, and set prices. Say you’re a vegetarian who wants to create a cookbook featuring some of your favourite recipes from other cookbooks and magazine articles, with some of your own dishes included. Once you’ve selected the material you want to use, Bookriff obtains the content from the publisher, the permission to use it and the price. If you excerpt 15 chapters from various books, for example, the new compilation you create might sell for $15 ($1 per chapter).
Dominic Schaefer
Bookriff is writing the next chapter in book publishing with a platform that allows anyone to create compilations and anthologies from published works
Bookriff CEO Rochelle Grayson: remember remixed tapes? Now you can remix books
It costs the creator nothing to create the book. For every book sold through Bookriff’s marketplace, publishers receive 70%; Bookriff receives 30%. Bookriff is recommending to publishers that they kick back 5% of their profits to the curator-creator. And if some of the content is yours, you set your own price on your content and receive the money through Bookriff. Not all publishers are necessarily keen on the idea of having their work going into a stew with work from their competitors, and some authors might not like the idea either. But Grayson said that, for the most part, publishers like Bookriff. “The response from publishers
has been overwhelming. They’ve all been looking for ways to repurpose their content and make it fresh.” While most of the books sold through Bookriff are likely to be in e-book format, the company is working with Ingram Publishing Services, which specializes in on-demand short run printing, to publish in print format as well. Scott and Grayson believe the biggest potential market is in academia, the legal and medical professions and market research. Bookriff celebrated a soft launch last week and will work with publishers before opening the service to the general public. • nbennett@biv.com
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