aNewDomain — When my biz partner, aNewDomain cofounder John C. Dvorak, gets behind a new tech or service, I pay attention. This time, John is focusing his sights on a new service called Crowdlaunch.IT. He’s even launching his new sci-fi book there. I’m an author, too, so I took a look.
As it turns out, our mutual friend Moses Ma is the brain behind this new service, a new twist on crowdfunding that is specifically tailored to help authors like John C. Dvorak and me launch books more effectively. But with it, you can also movies, music, apps, your new business, your new product, your new website, your new coaching practice, you name it. Books are just a point of departure.
In an interview with aNewDomain, Moses said:
The typical startup only needs to raise a few hundred thousand dollars to build an app, but it needs to raise millions to launch it. For mature companies, launching a new global brand costs $20-100 million. The friction in getting new businesses off the ground isn’t in development, it’s the cost of launching that first product. This is a new way to leverage crowdfunding techniques to ‘crowd-enable’ the launch of your next product at a significantly lower cost and with better results. And we’re going to start with books.”
Crowdlaunch has just started its alpha test. To get in on the action or just check out the situation with John’s forthcoming science fiction book, just head to the crowdlaunch.it site.
The Crowdlaunch open beta is starting later this year, featuring a dozen books by some very notable authors. Every year it gets harder to sell books, so if this works, I want to know. Only way to do that is to try it myself, so I’m going to be one of them, because I want to see if the system can work. Sometime next month, we’ll announce my new book on Crowdlaunch, in the service’s open beta. It’ll feature 12 books by notable authors. Maybe my biography of Steve Wozniak will be one. We’ll see.
And if you’re one of the many anewdomain readers who’s a fan of John and Adam Curry’s No Agenda Show podcast, you might want to pay special attention. Moses is letting No Agenda listeners to have a shot at one of the 12 slots. If you have a book coming out in early 2015 that you’d like to crowdlaunch, just send Moses an email at moses@ngenven.com with the line “No Agenda rocks!” in the subject header.
Stay tuned.
For aNewDomain.net, I’m Gina Smith.
Gina Smith is The New York Times bestselling author of Apple founder Steve Wozniak’s biography, iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Doing It (Norton, 2006/2014). She is also founder and editorial director here at aNewDomain. Email her at gina@anewdomain.net, follow her @ginasmith888 and find her posts on Google+ at her +Gina Smith page.
