Show HN: I made wits.io where writers can earn money with book summaries | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I made wits.io where writers can earn money with book summaries

wits.io

79 pointszaheerbaloch79 comments

Why are only 50% of profits (not even revenue) redistributed to contributors? The content creators are the ones adding all of the value to your website.

Or am I reading it wrong and that is ON TOP of the revenue they get from engagement?

Either way, nice website.

Connecting the contributors to the readers is also value, isn't it?

Anyway, 50% comission by the platform seems much to me too. Are the rights for distribution given exclusively to Wits.io, or can the author publish the same content elsewhere?

Changing to 85/15 based on feedback. Is that fair?

Its just a start... I wasnt sure about the number hence started with 50%.... I can bump it to a bigger number... What makes sense? 70/30... or 80/20? or 90/10?

no way i would read an entire book, to write a small summary, and then get only 50% of "profits" (even if it is changed to 85% (still says 50% for me)). On top of that there's no clue how much that would be. You're basically asking people to work on spec for have of some unknown future profit. The word "distributed" makes me concerned too because you may mean, " we take all the profits and distribute them evenly across the people who wrote summaries" which could have dramatic consequences for pay vs work.

Without any real numbers i see no reason to believe that this would result in anything more than working for WAYYYY below minimum wage. Remember, it takes a while to read a book and you're asking me to do it as a way to "make money".

Also, i don't understand how someone "liking" my review converts to "profit" are they paying to "like" it? That seems unlikely. If not... i'm not seeing where money ever enters the system, and thus how profit is ever generated and thus why i should ever expect to earn anything from my work.

I think it's a mistake to distribute payment based on likes, reading time or engagement.

Firstly, the writer is doing all the work only to be paid based on a completely opaque formula. I read it as "maybe there's a chance you'll get paid, but it's most likely nothing." Why would I go through the process of applying and contributing if I'm not getting paid shit?

Furthermore, your site will benefit from having a wide range of book reviews on all sorts of obscure topics, so people will know they can visit your site for any kind of review. However, I imagine there will be some kind of power law distribution as to the kinds of reviews people will actually read. So the guy who writes a review for Jane Eyre will make a decent chunk of change, and everyone else will basically get nothing. Why would I want to write a review on this cool, non-AP-English book I just read when I'm going to maybe make three cents off of it?

I would go with 85/15. This is what Skillshare used to charge (15%) when they had in-person/live classes marketplace. I think it's pretty fair. Good luck!

Done. Its now 85/15 :)

I know its only a few minutes since the change, but the contributions page still shows 50%. Edge Caching?

Can you please try again. Should be fixed by now.

https://www.wits.io/writer says 85% but https://www.wits.io/contribute still says 50%.

yes, the linked/submitted page is /contribute, and it still says 50%

check /contribute. :)

"1,337 people have signed up so far."

Is that just boilerplate or was I really lucky?

It just switched to 1,338

https://www.wits.io/api/signupCount

1342 for me. Looks like it actually may be a real count. Although the count didn't necessarily have to start at zero.

Naah.. Its real number :)

Looks boilerplate.

naah... its real... maker here.

I had an idea to do something similar but with the following differences:

- publishers could submit either text or audio

- publishers could choose between summarizing the entire book, or each chapter

- the app would have a kind of "marketplace" where summary writers could link up with audio producers. This would be helpful for (a) people who want to publish both written and audio summaries but didn't have audio knowledge, and (b) people who want to monetize their audio capabilities but don't necessarily know any books to summarize.

Feel free to steal my ideas. I reeaaalllyyy want an app where I can find decent long-form podcast-style summaries of non-fiction books that I don't have the time to read.

Thanks so much. Audio summaries are such a great idea that I never thought of before. Once I have couple of writers/authors I will throw this idea on them.

yeah just stream it like spotify and then charge a monthly fee. I'd throw my money at that.

Audio is going big everyday, so definitely I will look if I can make something there.

Have you looked a Blinkist? https://www.blinkist.com/

Yeah but I don't like it. What I'm looking for is an open, user-generated platform where the best summaries are upvoted. Blinkist is more of a curated list, and they're all formatted the same. I honestly don't give a crap about a 10-minute summary of a book. If I want a good summary, where I actually absorb some of the info, I need at least a 10 minute segment on each chapter. And even then, preferably, I could choose to listen to a different chapter-by-chapter summary by someone else if I wanted to.

Hm, interesting. I kind of forgot about it during my trial period, never even used it, and I wasn't willing to shell out the entire year ($80?) for it.

A quick and dirty option could be text to speech. It won't be as nice as audio, but easy to code and less bandwidth.

If a book's ideas can be absorbed in 15 minutes, was it ever really a book?

I've seen these business summaries on offer elsewhere--it always struck me as an approach to signaling, not learning. In this model the "reader" can manufacture the appearance of knowledge of a subject without taking the time to invest oneself in it. Or perhaps now the books even manufacture the appearance of knowledge while being tiny ideas unworthy of serious consideration.

I think if I was working with anyone who used a service like this though, I would have second thoughts about them. Isn't this just trend-chasing dressed up as knowledge acquisition?

Sunmaries are not there to prevent you from reading a book, but to highlight which books are worth reading.

Most books spend about 80% of the content defending an idea. Something like 33 Strategies of War can easily be summarized into 15 minutes, but it will lose its charm, as the book relies on historical storytelling to get its points across.

I don't know if it is necessarily signalling, but I too have a dislike for this type of "reading". I think it mostly depends on the book itself - for example, you probably won't get a lot from a 15-minute summary of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, but maybe you'll get like 70% from a book like Nudge by Sunstein and Thaler.

Holy sh*t. No kidding. I just made https://booksummaries.me based on the idea that publishers summaries could also give a good idea especially the videos where they talk about the general idea behind the book.

Take it for a spin y'all - https://booksummaries.me

I get the desire to post this here, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to do your own Show HN instead?

Also, I looked at the reviews on the first book you have listed (Crazy Rich Asians), and many of them are pure gibberish. Like not even real words. Shouldn't be too hard to clean that up, and it'll make the site look a lot more credible when you do.

Don't know if this is helpful, but Derek Sivers has a giant review page of all the books he has read. Maybe wits.io competes with this by better reviews, maybe not. In any case, I'm putting this here for all interested parties: https://sivers.org/book

No terms of use, privacy statement ? About us ? So who are you and why would anybody trust you ?

Honest question, why would you trust it more if it had a page that says, in a nutshell, "you can trust us because we say you can trust us"? That is something I always wonder when someone brings this up. Is there some component of international contract law that makes self proclamations of trustworthiness legally binding?

T&C and Privacy pages are there... For some reason not showing in the footer... I am checking up on it... and will fix it.

I felt the same when i tried to look for an About Us to try to understand more about the page. The website is too minimalist in my opinion. Although the looks are good, the lack of info makes me doubt if the site is for real or not.

My 2 cents.

He is from Balochistan, Pakistan terrorized area and an entrepreneur. Be easy on him, he will add it soon.

Thanks for this. I am in fact from Pakistan but resident in Bahrain currently. And yes, I had to move out from Karachi due to security situation.

I thought it had improved with the military operation? Which neighborhoods are so bad as to have to leave the country?

What does him living in Pakistan have to do with anything? How do you know this?

Totally :) Thanks to Stripe Atlas I am able to build this website and try to make a business out of it.

> How do you know this?

I believe from the comment history of the OP. There is a specific comment where the OP mentions that they are Pakistani.

I’ve been using [Instaread][https://instaread.co]. I find it to be a pretty good source of high quality book summaries, which you can read or listen to.

Awesome idea! Apparently I hesitated as there was no trial or anything. I have no idea what I can expect or how good the quality is. But really good selection of books for HN.

Yeah, I think there should be a few books in a "free tier" section. Maybe very popular books like the 4 Hour Workweek or Lean Startup.

Then leave the rare content for membership tier. There is a 7 day trial, but it's a huge turn off as I'd just procrastinate and never look at it properly.

Blinkist would put their low quality books in the free tier, which was also a turn off.

I thought about it a lot about putting a free tier... but the work that needed to be done (code) is not there yet... for sure will add the free tier section where you can read at least couple of books for FREE

And thank you for using nopassword. It's 2018... why isn't this the standard???

Thank you :) I always forget my passwords... I didnt want to use Facebook or Twitter login but still make it easy for the users to be able to login without remembering their passwords. Slack and some other sites use it which makes it super easy to login.

Thanks. I used blinkist for a while but the books were totally irrelevant to me. You can start the 7 day trial to get access to all the books...

I would like to see a sample. I am, also, annoyed a little by the three "Apply to contribute" and the "Write & make money", all on the same page.

For more context, check out https://wits.io and https://www.producthunt.com/posts/wits-io

From their website:

Weekly summaries of great books recommended by founders and makers

Cut through the BS and get 10-15 minute book summaries sent to you, weekly. Become a more creative and innovative individual each week.

If a book can be summarized in 10-15 minutes and the rest of the book was worthless "filler", I wonder whether or not that's the sort of book worth summarizing in the first place.

Most non-fiction books usually spend about 80% of it explaining a concept.

Book summaries will tell you what the concept is, but not why it works or how they defend it.

The book Outliers has some very bold concepts - the 10,000 hour rule, as well as justifying that underdogs are usually the winners. These are easy to claim, hard to defend, and you have to read the book to understand it.

Totally. Hence the summaries. If you like the summary of a book so much you can always go back and read the book. The summaries are not meant to stop you from reading books.

UX comments: 3 buttons on a page which do the same, is very confusing. And then the button in the corner, what does it do? Also, what will you do with this content? Examples? I am interested in the project but as a reader, not a contributor writer.

Just curious, how does copyright work in this case? To summarize someone's book (especially if we are selling the summaries), don't we have to get permission from the book's authors?

No. The ideas and the knowledge in the book don't fall under copyright, the concrete expression does.

But the more interesting point is how they use the names of well-known people. They try to pass Elon Musk and Bill Gates off as affiliated with their site.

I'd say there's a pretty good argument that this is illegal and could be shut down hard.

Those well-known people are not affiliated with me. These are just book recommendations by those people. And I did put their images on purpose as it makes the site more community looking and trustworthy. Should I mention that I have no affiliation with those founders/ceos?

There's nothing wrong with using legal pictures of people. and quotes, but I would just add attribution to the source of the quotes. And statement at the bottom about the company not being affiliated or endorsed by these people.

I think it gets very close to presenting those people as the authors of summaries/book recommendations on the site.

That‘s what I thought on my first visit, anyway.

Depending how the site is further developed, especially when the summaries are available (they aren‘t, yet, are they?), this concern might disappear. Right now, I wouldn‘t be comfortable running it.

I interpreted it the same way too. It looks like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg wrote those summaries. It is blurring the lines between prototype and product.

The summaries are currently available after starting the trial. I think it needs more work to show those people didn't contribute those book summaries but rather recommended those books.

Cool. So I can take your book, summarize, sell the summary without having to get your permission first?

The same thing is true for podcasts etc then? Say, I summarize 2 hour podcast into 15 mins?

Writing down your thoughts and selling them is perfectly fine and legal in most places. Even if those are thoughts you had after reading a specific book and those thoughts are about the content of that book.

Haven't you ever heard of Cliff Notes?

Yes? Provided you're using your own words rather than making large direct excerpts.

Yes you can. Until and unless you are using your own words. Same goes for podcasts.

Until and unless one is not using the original content from the books as is, there is no copyright issue. I am though worried about using the book covers as they might be an issue. But for now as indie maker I am going with it. If I get a legal notification from someone then will remove the cover images.

Is there a way to contact you directly? Didn’t see anything on the site or in your HN profile.

Hi there! Yes but when you signup for trial under FAQ.

"Whenever a wits.io member likes your book summary, you earn money."

What is your business model?

Subscriptions: 5$/month, 49$/year (I am not the creator)

Thanks. This is right. $5/month and $49 a year. I havent really figured out the details of profit sharing with authors yet... Which I will do once I have some people willing to contribute and after checking whats fair.

I love the simple design and look of the site. Did you do that yourself?

Yes. But I am not a designer at all. I have looked at different sites over time and tried to incorporate what I liked there and made sense for wits.io

Where can I buy those summaries?

You can subscribe to wits.io

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