Pierre passed a fascinating article from the CBC to me this morning on Sita Sings The Blues by Nina Paley. The reason I am doing a blog post on Sharing Books about this article is that it shows how absolutely powerful giving away your content can be. There is a fantastic quote in the article from Nina Paley:

'The more I let go, the more money seems to be heading back toward me. There's enormous untapped power in the audience. ' — Nina Paley, filmmaker.

This notion that giving your content away, that allowing your creative works to freely move and distribute rather then clamping down, is critical to the Sharing Books business model. It is also critical to the success of our book creators. By giving the work away you open yourself to tens of thousands of potential readers, far more then you would ever hope to get with traditional print and distribution. You have the ability to link to your own personal websites, where you can sell merchandise and grow your brand. Sharing Books offers a platform for authors and illustrators to publish their work, develop their work, and grow their brand.

As the world gets increasingly digital, and media content gets further separated from the media container the ability to let your work flow freely is going to become increasingly critical. Some of our creators get this already, developing Poster Poems ( one page books ) and mini-books ( six to 8 page teaser books ). These are works that a traditional publisher would never consider as viable, but in the world of container-less content these are the exact sort of user generated ideas that have so very much potential.

Labels: business philosophy, content, ebooks