Borders targets bloggers with new e-book publishing platform
Following last week's debut of "Kindle Singles," a new shorter-form publishing format exclusively for Amazon's Kindle e-reader, book retailer Borders has announced its own blogger-centric e-reader publishing platform called "Borders -- Get Published."
Powered by BookBrewer, "Get Published" will let independent authors publish and sell their e-books through the Borders e-book store in a quick and easy fashion. Borders is specifically targeting bloggers with this service, promising "Blog to e-book in 10 minutes."
Users simply copy and paste their document or import their blog into the BookBrewer Web interface. The service offers tools to edit content, add images, and break content into chapters, and documents are published in ePub format,
The service, however, is not free, and Borders takes a cut from e-book sales too.
The two publishing packages include the $89.99 Basic Publishing option, where BookBrewer assigns the book an ISBN, and makes it available to all major eBook stores at a price set by the writer. The $199.99 Advanced Publishing Package gives Authors full rights to their ePub file, which they can distribute in any way they choose.
Because Borders will take a cut from every book sold from the Basic Publishing program, it is unsurprising that it would open the content up for sale in competitors' e-book stores.
"Everyone has a story to tell, pictures to share or advice to give. It turns out that those are exactly the kinds of things people want to buy and read as eBooks," said BookBrewer CEO Dan Pacheco in a statement today. "We're thrilled to have the opportunity to work with an iconic brand like Borders, which not only has an incredible customer base, but also has a great local community focus."
Borders - Get Published goes live at borders.bookbrewer.com on October 25.