BookRiff: A Marketplace for Curators

On O’Reilly Radar (@radar), Jenn Webb (@JennWebb) interviews Rochelle Grayson (@RochelleGrayson), CEO of BookRiff, (@BookRiff), a publishing start-up going live at the end of September. Jenn asks, “Ever want to compile your own cookbook, travel guide or textbook? Has your publisher edited out sections of your book you'd like to share with interested readers? BookRiff aims to solve these problems by creating new ways to access and compile content.”

Her interview explains how BookRiff works and how it can benefit publishers and consumers. Rochelle says her company is based on an open market concept, allowing publishers to sell the content they want at prices they set and consumers to buy and customize that content as they see fit; each getting a percentage of sales along the way.

A Riff is a remix of chapters from published books, essays, articles, or even one's own content. The concept behind BookRiff is to create an online platform that allows consumers and publishers to remix and to resell content, while ensuring that all original content owners and contributors get paid.

BookRiff’s target audience is “domain experts” who can curate — and perhaps even create — content that is of interest to a specific reading audience. This could include things like cookbooks, travel guides, extended “authors editions,” and custom textbooks.

Read this in full.

How do you foresee this effecting your publishing/sales/distribution plans for the next 12 months?

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Wow--this is really a major change, and at the same time it feels like an inevitable result of the wide availability of material on the web. Best to have it out in the open and controlled. But if it's happening in a controlled way at BookRiff, it might be happening in an unauthorized way elsewhere--which might mean that the original authors aren't getting paid. Is this a new wiki process, or is this the publishing version of Napster?
— lambertedits
Actually, BookRiff is a content marketplace, where content owners set the prices and permissions associated with their content. We simply allow consumers and others the ability to access and purchase pieces of that content as a way to create new compilations (we call them "Riffs"). Think of BookRIff as the "iTunes for Books" or a place to build a "Literary Mixtape", while ensuring that ALL original content owners and contributors get paid. Through BookRiff, you will be able to purchase individual tracks (chapters, essays, articles), add your own content, and create your very own, custom playlist (Riff) and more importantly, resell and market your newly created Riff to your fans, friends, audience, etc. You can even make a commission on every sale of your new Riff!

In terms of content, we are signing deals and working directly with publishers, authors, and content owners to bring their content libraries into BookRiff. This is definitely NOT a Napster approach!

— RochelleGrayson