I'd like to make a case for NFT books. Not just because I have an NFT book available for purchase right now but because I believe NFT books are the future of digital reading. Granted, right now, the learning curve is steeper than it should be for mass market appeal but I'm hoping to find a few intrepid believers to step forward and be a part of the future, now.
The best argument for switching your preferred digital library to NFTs is simply ownership. Right now, when you purchase eBooks from any of the big retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.) you are not truly purchasing the book. What you are doing is unlocking access to the digital files that said retailer owns in exchange for a fee. They can tell you you own the book all you want but read the fine print. If any one of those retailers folds up, your books are gone. If any one of those retailers decided that after you've plunked your hard earned money down on those books that those books do not meet their content guidelines or the author/rights holder has misbehaved, those books will disappear. No returns, no refunds, no exchanges.
You don't truly own your books on Kindle, Nook and Kobo. Any books you purchase on those platforms are not yours. Bottom line.
Then, there is resale value. We know that when we purchase a paperback or hardcover book, we can lend it to a friend, treasure it on a bookshelf or even place it in a little free library for the enjoyment of a random stranger. And, of course, if you're lucky enough to have a used book store or consignment shop around you, you can always sell it to them for some pocket change. Even today, there are platforms like Pango Books and even Amazon where you can resell you're used books on the secondary market.
You can't resell your eBooks though. Best you can do is make them available to lend out to your friends on Kindle. But when you purchase an NFT book, you purchase honest-to-goodness ownership. And with ownership comes the ability to resell. Best of all, with an NFT book is that there is no such thing as 'used'. A digital book is always as new as the day it was first minted (minting is crypto-speak for made available to purchase). Now, depending on how many copies or versions of an NFT book are created will determine its resale value.
When you think of NFTs now, you probably think about digital art work. The image of a cartoon monkey in various outfits, against different backgrounds and sporting different accoutrements likely comes to mind. Each of those monkeys have varying degrees of commonality. Just like trading cards. A lot of trading card images are printed at a high rate of frequency (the commons), some at a lesser rate of frequency (the uncommons), some are printed with a very low degree of commonality (the rares) and in some cases, the ultra-rare, one-of-a-kind card could be made available. Like any market, the price is dictated by the supply and demand. The NFT market is no different. I can choose to print one million copies of my NFT book or I can choose to go Wu-Tang style and print only one NFT copy of the book. So the book will be priced for purchase accordingly and you can resell the book accordingly based on availability of the book in the market.
But, you can resell it. No matter what. If a lot of copies of the book are still available to purchase, you can elect to undercut the market and resell the book at a cut rate. If there were a thousand copies of the book minted and all of them have sold out, then, even though there are a lot of copies out there, none of them are available on the open market any longer and you can resell the book at a premium to those who want but no longer can purchase it from the minter. And, those prized, one-of-a-kind NFT books, well we already know how those go on the secondary market.
What's more, if you are a writer or publisher, you also stand to gain from the resale of NFT books. That's not the case with traditional used book markets. The authors and publishers only get one bite at that apple. Secondary sales go to the owner of the book only. Not necessarily so with NFTs. NFT's come with what are known as 'smart contracts' which are digital stipulations tied to ever NFT. Since NFTs reside on a blockchain, ownership is tracked digitally over a lifetime. Royalties can be written into the smart contract on all future exchanges of ownership of a given NFT. In other words, the creators continue to get royalties in perpetuity on every sale of the book. That's a win all around and an opportunity that has not existed in the world until now.
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| Haunted Hamburger House: An NFT Book available now |
Those are only a small handful of reasons to start building your NFT bookshelf up starting right now. Ownership, true ownership. That is a thing that has frustrated eBook readers since their inception. Even if you do retain ownership of eBook files, storage is on you. If your laptop, or tablet or phone take a crap, the file is lost forever. NFT books exist on the blockchain. Until the world explodes and the entire infrastructure of the internet is obliterated, your book will always be available to you in some way. Think about it, you could burn your NFT book and still own a perfectly good copy of it the next day. You'll just have to go to Amazon to buy a new tablet. That's okay, Amazon is going to need the business after everyone pulls out of Kindle for NFTs.
