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After months of traipsing around in the shadows of dark
hallways, cloaked in the chilly blanket of secrecy, I'm pleased to announce my
latest business venture:
In an era where bookstores are shuttered every day, Hunt to
Read recreates the excitement of hunting through bookshelves for those hidden
gems that one would stumble across in a bookstore, but online. We eschew stuff
like "virtual bookshelves," and try to boil the experience down to
its essential components for readers: look at the cover, if interested, click
through and look at the blurb, let us know what you think of both via a rating,
and then if you like it enough, click through to find the book on various
retailers.
For authors, we provide a suite of cutting-edge analytics
that show you how often folks clicked on your cover to get to the book detail
page, how often they expand the blurb, how often folks click through to the
various online bookstores, etc.
It may not seem like a big deal to the layperson, but this
kind of data is absolute gold to even traditionally-published writers and even
publishers, who don't get much in the way of feedback aside from sales numbers.
We can do this in large part because my business partner,
Rick, is a analytics programming genius. Even though this is just the
"first build," the analytics interface is already incredibly polished
and reliable, and is drawing rave reviews from the folks who have already put
their books on the site.
We think there's great value in these analytics, so down the
road we'll charge a small monthly fee to list books, as well as access to other
cool stuff we have planned for authors and publishers down the line.
For the moment, though, we need books on our site so that
our readers don't get bored! So we're offering unlimited free 6 month listings
for a limited time to build our library. That includes full access to our
analytics and a spot on the site, absolutely no risk, we don't take your credit
card number or anything.
Eventually, we have some exciting new improvements waiting
to enhance the reader experience, all kinds of good stuff that I think people
will really enjoy. And, of course, once we have enough books to make it
workable, we'll separate out books by genre, devices they're available for
(i.e. Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc.).
But for now, we need more books. If you're an author, feel
free to list your book via the link below, absolutely free, no risk, for six
months:
If you're a reader, by all means click through and take a
look at the interface; we're always looking for feedback (both positive and
negative) on how to improve the reader experience. Know that a lot of cool new
stuff is in the works for readers in the future, but for now, browse and enjoy.
And by all means, let your writer (and publisher) friends
know that they can list their books for free; we need more listings so folks
have more books to browse.
Happy to answer any questions in the comments, but for now,
just very excited to finally be able to tell you all about the site!
-D.J.
Labels: Fiction, Hunt to Read, Indie Publishing, Non-Fiction, Reading, Writing
