This is an edited email interview with Raz Godelnik, CEO of Eco-Libris. Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working with book lovers, bookstores, publishers and authors worldwide to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books.
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#pdxbl: What’s your take on crowdcreation as a method of publishing?
Raz: Crowdcreation can be best applied to publishing where you have a community sharing certain passion and ideas and also interacting beyond the book project. An example is BlogHer’s first book “Sleep is for the Weak”, which we worked with a while ago. It was edited by Rita Arens and included 23 mommybloggers.
Another crowdsourcing experiment is “Watchlist”, co-created by 22 thriller writers. One person set the action in motion, then handed off to another writer, who added a new chapter, and so on. The result was a story with some wild turns and each writer’s particular stylistic flourishes. I think this is a great example of how crowdsourcing can create significant added value if you use it creatively.
You can find other creative crowdsourcing ideas in publishing, such as TenPages, where aspiring writers post the first 10 pages of their book. Those pages then become viewable to the site’s visitors, who can buy 5-euro shares in the book. Books that sell 2,000 shares in 4 months remain active and what shares they collect go into production, promotion, and author compensation. The author then has eight months to write the tome with the help of a professional editor.
#pdxbl: Why have there not been more books published in this fashion?
Raz: I separate again between writing and publishing. Writing is usually a solitary pursuit, so you need to have a good reason to look for an alternative crowdsourcing writing process. Also, we haven’t yet seen many proofs of the benefit of crowdsourcing. We’ll need to wait for a crowdsourced best-seller or two to get more publishers and writers into it.
When it comes to publishing, crowdsourcing helps to create new models. I think that we’ll see more initiatives like TenPages and WEbook, where crowdsourcing is used to reduce the risk involved in publishing a new book.
#pdxbl: What are the advantages and drawbacks of crowdcreation?
Raz: The advantages are the ability to create something that can’t be done individually. Just think of Wikipedia, which helps to promote ideas and voices that don’t get the chance to be published elsewhere. It can strengthen communities that work together. It can also get creative people to be even more creative.
The drawbacks are that it might be more difficult to generate uniform quality out the process and it can be challenging like with every other group work.
#pdxbl: Thank you for your time, Raz!
