Help me with an idea (digital / mobile publishing) | Hacker News Reader

Help me with an idea (digital / mobile publishing)

1 pointkolinko7 comments

The idea for my company is that I will find authors that have (or can produce) interesting content, but have no skills or money to prepare an iPhone application.

The company will then prepare the iPhone app & split the profit with the author. Much like a traditional publishing company, but instead on paper / cds we will do it on the iPhone / mobile medium.

What do you think? Where can I find authors? (I already cooperated with two, but that is not enough)

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What sort of content? Are the authors known? Do they have some name recognition that can be leveraged?

Are you asking about the authors that I'm already in contact with, or the authors I'm looking for?

If you're asking whether the authors I've already struck a deal with are famous - no. One application is a polish travel guide (Wyspa Wolin) and the author had previously written a book on the subject, the other one is a game that has very nice graphics - the author is a painter.

Of course I publish information about the authors and their brands. Hopefully the company will get to participate in more and more famous ones.

The content I'm looking for - for now it's too early to specialize in just one, so just any content that is not too hard to transform into an application and is not too niche ( polish travel app was too niche :)

You wrote, "for now it's too early to specialize in just one". That's the opposite of commonly recommended strategy. You specialize when you start out, not later on. You diversify when you have some amount of success.

Anyway, to answer your original question: go to a bookstore. Contact the author directly with your offer. It's possible the author will have the rights to put the content into an iPhone app. Even if he doesn't, he's probably got lots of other content that hasn't been published.

If you want to think bigger, contact the publisher directly. They have lots of authors and you may be able to negotiate a deal.

Alternatively, look at websites, blogs and such. Contact those authors.

I don't know anything about iphone apps. So I don't understand what you mean by "authors". Care to clarify?

If you have written a book, or you are a blogger, or you have some kind of a speciality then I'd consider you an author on a potential author :)

What I'm offerring to a potential author is that we work together to prepare an application that would sell. The author provides content / knowledge / expertise, I (we) provide the technical background and some initial marketing. Then we split the profit.

It's a model similar to the one that book publishers have, but the medium is different.

I might actually be interested but I still don't quite get it. I joined this site more than a year ago to ask around about learning a programming language so I can make a game (simulation) for educational purposes related to my health site. So far, I haven't learned a programming language. I have a full time job and find myself stuck between a rock and hard place as far as trying to make some kind of side project profitable enough to leave my job.

I don't have an iphone, so maybe that is part of the problem.

Anyone?:)

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