HOBBYHORSE JUMPS ONTO BIZ RACETRACK

After reading Jenny Bhatt's post, Reader Question: Turning a Hobby into a Business, it is (high tea) time to take my passion for tea onto the track of doing business with other tea enthusiasts. I will combine my 10+ years blogging experience of creating online content with a longtime consumption of the beverage from the plant called Camellia sinensis. Rachel Parker: I am ready to "eat my Wheaties"! ;)

For X-mas, I got an e-book reader (Letto) designed by Bookeen (Cybook Odyssey).

Ebook reader designed by Bookeen

Now it is time to learn all the features (e.g., how to download a book with Adobe Digital Editions) and do research on the self-publishing industry and e-book market. What could I learn from Seth Godin's new Kickstarter project, "The Icarus Deception"?

Here is an excerpt from Alexandra Alter's article, Your E-book Is Reading You:

There are some 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S., according to analysts at Forrester Research. In the first quarter of 2012, e-books generated $282 million in sales, compared with $230 million for adult hardcover books, the Association of American Publishers recently found.

Meanwhile, the shift to digital books has fueled an arms race among digital start-ups seeking to cash in on the massive pool of data collected by e-reading devices and reading apps. New e-reading services, which allow readers to purchase and store books in a digital library and read them on different devices, have some of the most sophisticated reader tracking software. The digital reading platform Copia, which has 50,000 subscribers, collects detailed demographic and reading data—including the age, gender and school affiliation of people who bought particular titles, as well as how many times the books were downloaded, opened and read—and shares its findings with publishers. Copia aggregates the data, so that individual users aren't identifiable, and shares that information with publishers that request it.

(WSJ.com, July 19, 2012.)

I am thinking of starting out with shorter stories (see "Kindle Singles: compelling ideas at their natural length") with a twist, like the e-book, Tea Party Fairy Tales. I want to create a Tea Party Manifesto in order to connect tea enthusiasts around the globe. My vision: Tea For The Win! My mission: "Tea53"...

So far, I have ordered the following e-books:

• "Kom igång & skriv!" ("Get about & write!" in Swedish) by Johanna Wistrand.
• "Lyckas med bokutgivning" ("Succeeding with book publishing" in Swedish) by Sölve Dahlgren, Lars Rambe och Ann Ljungberg.
• The Flinch by Julien Smith.

Do you think it will be a "walk in the park"?

Animation Boot Sequence of Bookeen Cybook Odyssey powered by HSIS

ELECTRONIC BOOK

After a conversation with Tod (author and app entrepreneur), I am really motivated to publish an e-book (electronic book) in the near future. The topic of the first book will be my passion for tea with a twist...

I am interested in getting input on the topic and for example the following things:

• Self-publishing tools?
• Price - freemium version?
• Distribution - through Amazon and other channels?
• Lenght of the book?
• Different formats (audio, video, text)?
• Guest writers and additional contributors, e.g., illustrators?
• Reviewers and book readers?
• Donations, crowdfunding, etc.?

I will be in touch with fine folks like David Siteman Garland, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jim Kukral, Maritza Parra, and Timothy Ferriss.

Maybe I should attend a "self-publishing boot camp for authors"? I am planning to promote my future book via social media channels.

I am writing down my thoughts in my Field Notes memo & workbook...

Field Notes Memo Book