I previously covered Inkshares, which purports to be “both a book publisher and crowdfunding platform,” acting as sort of bridge between the Smashwords style of self-publishing platform and the crowdfunding publication approaches that you see on Indiegogo and elsewhere. Now the platform has announced “a unique feature to both crowdfunding and publishing: Inkshares Credits—a rewards system that reinvests the sales success of books published back into the readers who made a book’s publication possible.”
Inskhares explains:
Inkshares Credits can be used to back a book project or purchase any book on the Inkshares platform. As a full-service publisher, any book project that hits a specified pre-order threshold will be published by Inkshares and then distributed by Ingram to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, as well as hundreds of independent bookstores.
Inkshares Credits are earned through recommendations, referrals, and discovering best-sellers.
“We have a passionate community of readers on Inkshares. With Inkshares Credits, we wanted to both reward our readers and make it even easier for them to decide what we publish,” says Jeremy Thomas, CEO of Inkshares. “Our ultimate goal is for Inkshares to be a truly reader-driven publisher, where books get published based on their merit. With Inkshares Credits, it’s now possible for any reader to engage with content, decide what gets published, and then share in a book’s success without ever even opening their wallet.”
I’m still of two minds on Inkshares’ approach, not least as its idiom of choice seems to be quintessential Fast Company-style startup hypespeak. Still, the proof will be in the actual merit of the works that come out of the platform, I guess.
