TRANSCRIPT 🔗
[Speaker 1]
It might be the most advanced e-reader that's ever been created. Basically, this entire showcase page is to help support authors to provide them with an easy-to-use marketing page.
[Speaker 2]
How thing.pub is going. I know by the time this gets released, you probably will have done your closed beta, which is coming up. So talk to me about how excited you are for closed beta.
[Speaker 1]
Oh, I'm simultaneously excited and terrified. The panic has already seeped in, mostly because I want to make sure that the performance is there, that everything loads quickly. So I'm excited to see how things go.
I will say we did some really solid testing early on. I had an author helping me who has a very strangely formatted book, and I explicitly was like, hey, I would love your help to test this. My parser for the e-book intake, I want to put it through its paces.
And so we did it initially about a month ago. I found the bugs that we needed to for things that were just strangely formatted, because it was very rudimentary at first. And then I went and refined it.
There was like 10 hit list items on there for strange formatting, knocked them all out. And there's only one thing now that needs to still be fixed, which is actually using asterisks for bold formatting. So like a super easy one, which is great.
So I'm really happy about that. And the e-reader, I think it might be the most advanced e-reader that's ever been created, because it can take almost any format that you have in a book and applies it in perfect visual fidelity in the e-reader. And I know that Kindle, for example, that e-reader is, you have to make an e-book version of your book.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, the EPUB.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so it's not as fun, so to speak, as a print edition, right? Because you can do more with print. So I'm pretty close to almost perfect parity between a print edition and an e-book version.
So I'm really happy with that. And I think that there's some really cool things on the horizon. If I can find the right partnership, or maybe I'll do it myself, I would love to when eventually get to direct sales on the platform, which is coming.
If people have audiobook versions, if I can find a way to sync audiobook with the e-reader and have that experience, I think that would be super fun. So I basically built a proprietary e-reader, because a lot of the existing library code out there for it just wasn't hitting the mark. So I studied the ones that were out there already, just to see how they were tying things together, and then decided that I need my own version, because it just wasn't what it needed to be.
But yeah, so I'm excited about that. The e-reader is really solid.
[Speaker 2]
The e-reader sounds pretty sweet. What other features should people know about Think That Pub that you're really proud of?
[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. So the e-reader, obviously a very reader-focused feature. The other part that I'm really happy about is My Book Showcases, which is essentially a hyper-customized and visual beauty, so to speak, a marketing page for individual books.
So whether the authors have already published or not, they can use these book pages. And if they turn it on to be public, then they also get SEO and everything else that goes along with it. So they can share this link with anybody, and it brings that user to this beautiful page that features the book visually, and you can pick your accent color that matches the vibe of the book.
So there's those types of things. There's a lot of all the genres, the tropes, narrative structure, representation is in there. So if you're part of a disabled community and you have a representation of something disabled in the book, it comes up in one of the filtering options.
So for readers who are specifically looking to support or read things that have representation that's personally important for them, that's an option as well. Where to buy, which is really, really important for authors, especially once you're past the pre-publishing stage, you can actually link to any store platform that you want, whether it's a paperback or your own personal author website. So all of that, basically this entire showcase page is to help support authors to provide them an easy to use marketing page that they can then go around and make a QR code.
If you're at a convention, all the details of your book, you just QR code link it to this page for yourself, and people can see this beautiful visual for your book. So I was really happy to build that. I really wanted something that was different from everything else for bookstores online, something that actually visually popped.
And then one of the things to help support the platform is coming after the initial closed beta is fully customized theming for the book pages. So like if you're working with an artist and you have maybe specific framing, like romance is the first genre I think of that would love to have something like this, these will be like premium themes basically, where you can help contribute to the cost of the platform, but you get this huge marketing boost because your literal page looks like something out of your own marketing material. So that's something that I'm really excited about.
And I would love to work with artists that do that type of work where they're having some filigree or other beautiful additions, like page dividers, those types of things that can be added in to really boost the visuals that you get to see on the page.
[Speaker 2]
So if I'm a romanticy officer, or officer, officer romanticy reporting for duty. This took a weird turn. But no, I'm trying to give an example here.
So if I have written a romanticy book and I join the platform, thing.pub, and I go, man, I really wish that I could show off my hulking werewolf with this damsel in distress, because that's the book that I've written. I can go, there's some sort of place or will be to purchase like, hey, I want a premium theme on my page. And
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then that also contributes to funding the platform.
Is that correct?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's exactly right. And everything that we did as a community, when I was talking to folks that are helping me early on, I had already decided that I wouldn't pay well any functionality, like things that actually matter. Your security is always going to be free.
Accessing the platform, free. Those things, the important stuff to function on the platform has got no paywall whatsoever. But cosmetics, they're great.
They're nice to have, but they're not required. And so I think that that was a fair exchange for keeping the platform free, but offering an alternative to boost what you're already going to be doing while also helping support the cost of the platform. So one thing to know is on thing.pub, there's actually a financial ledger. So you guys can all see money coming in and going out. So you can actually see what is really happening behind the scenes, really big on the transparency part. So I wanted to make sure that there was a way for people to see what was actually happening.
So that's one of the options that you'll get to as part of just supporting and being on the platform, you can see where all the money is actually going.
[Speaker 2]
Very cool. And rumor has it, you've got a discord that we can join if we want to join the early stages of the public build of thing.pub. Yes, that is correct.
[Speaker 1]
On the website now, you can go down. I think there's in the footer is a discord link. And then all my newsletters also always have the thing.pub discord. So yeah. And if you're not on the newsletter, even if you're coming to this later in the game, definitely join the newsletter because I frequently update new features. We're also going to be expanding the newsletter content.
I'm working with some of the community members to build out more educational type of, I guess, campaigns for lack of a better word, where people can learn more about what is on the platform. And yeah, so the newsletter is definitely a good option to hop in if you're not interested in discord.
[Speaker 2]
Fair. Now, if I am part of the not aware of thing.pub group at the moment, and I find out about you and I want to get involved, what do I do?
[Speaker 1]
So if you want to use the platform, just go into the website, you can register and you'll be put into the waitlist. I do all human verification. So you don't just get into the platform.
There's actually a validation process. I check out your socials, make sure you're not just a bot or a scammer, because the platform is focused on protection against the use and scrapers for AI. That's really important.
So that's also validated during that process. If you happen across the platform because of an author, and you've applied through the like ARC application, for example, I, they, the author will be the one to verify your account. So it is not just one person doing all that.
Yeah, yeah. So you know, I would never ever sleep. But if you are looking to get involved more on a collaborator level, emailing me is totally fine.
Contact that thing.pub is the fastest way just because I'm not always necessarily looking at my DMS and socials and things like that. But if you have ideas, or if you're interested in helping, one of the things that I do want to provide for authors in the future is translation services. So if you're a translator, that would be awesome.
If you guys want to reach out to be a vetted professional on the platform, that goes for editors, artists, all of that. If you're interested in being a vetted directory member, basically, that's also free. But we do validate that make sure you guys don't use AI and things like that.
[Speaker 2]
So, yeah, I can get a little badge next to my name. Validated.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, there's a check bar, checkbox or checkmark.
[Speaker 2]
Am I going to be able to, like purchase a premium checkmark or something like that's, you know, got my Romantici werewolf damsel in distress?
[Speaker 1]
You know, so profile cosmetics are going to be a thing. Yes. There's going to be the option if you guys prefer.
There's monthly subscription and it's very low entry. It's four dollars for like the basics and eight for something that's like basically everything. Authors will get the premium version of subscriptions once direct sales go out for free.
As long as you have something that's being sold on the platform, you'll have access to the premium level for free. And what else? The individual cosmetics can also just be simply purchased outright if you're not into subscriptions, kind of like what Discord does with some of their cosmetics as well.
[Speaker 2]
Emojis and things like that.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So similar to that. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Well, that's awesome. If you haven't heard of it before, thing.pub is the ARC and beta reader go to author platform. It sounds like it's going to evolve into a much broader scope project.
Before the show, Jules and I were talking about the scope creep that's going on anyway for all the fun features that you can't talk about just yet. So be sure to sign up for the newsletter and check out and sign up for thing.pub. And also tag your author friends because this is something that the author community has needed for a long time. And so having a centralized space for it is going to be rocking.
So be sure to check out thing.pub and follow Jules on all of her socials. Those will be in the show notes here. But until then, Jules, anything you want to say?
[Speaker 1]
No, just keep on reading and writing, guys. Don't stop.
[Speaker 2]
That's right. My romanticy is not coming to a shelf near you. Sorry, it's just for my personal collection.
That's weird. All right. Bye.