NFT Fractionalized Book
MARK MANSON is fractionalizing his book The Subtle Art… into meme quotes and selling them at auction as NFTs.
(You maintain the right for collection and display, but this does not make you the copyright owner of the passage. And you cannot use them for commercial purposes.
You can join the whitelist if you’re interested through the link here.)
I was contemplating the idea of copying a book into bite-sized pieces and offering them as NFTs where say, each chapter can be owned and displayed (or not). That way, you could have different communities that own different literature pieces. You would need to combine all of the parts to complete the work. An Easter egg hunt to finish the book.
Or you could sell a limited number of each chapter, so there is only a specific number in circulation. Then you would need to collect or have access to all of the parts in some capacity to have the completed manuscript.
I’m bullish on this idea, I think it’s really smart, and I’m glad that Bookcoin is making it a reality. It feels a tad clunky at this stage, but I believe there is a promising future for authors and writers in this format.
You can already do this with YouTube and podcasts where you can take a little clip of a larger work and then make that into its owner video, and that clip can generate revenue and work as marketing toward the complete piece.
Buying a piece of the book also makes you part of an exclusive club; through ownership, you receive an unreleased chapter of The Subtle Art…, admission into Mark’s Zero Fucks Club, 6-month membership into Mark’s new Subtle Art School, and future airdrops from BookCoin.
Effectively you’re buying a Mark Manson Triple-A card. On top of the memeifyed version of his book. They’re trying to add value to the offering apart from the purely collectible aspect of having the NFT through using the NFT as a ticket of entry into these exclusive communities.
In a macro, the concept of owning someone’s idea on the blockchain is an interesting one. It moves beyond owning digital art and owning status within a profile picture to owning someone’s thoughts.
Not pointed at Mark Manson, but how the BookCoin is executing the drop feels a little disheartening to the average enthusiast. You’re effectively buying yourself a ticket into an exclusive club that only owners can participate in.
Okay, that isn’t my qualm—my annoyance lies in the fact that in order to participate in the action, you need to be whitelisted, sure you want to eliminate potential people without a wallet for actual bidding and acquisition, makes sense.
What bothers me specifically about this drop is that there is a leaderboard that determines the que for bidding on the NFTs. The leaderboard is defined by a point system, and the most significant bonus comes from the referral of people to the sweepstakes page.
The only people that can and will populate the top of the leaderboards in a prime position to purchase the articles are influencers or other persons with a large enough audience to maintain the traffic.
This does good on Bookcoin for sharing its message and allowing a broader range of people to know that the drop exists, but it’s reinforcing status with more status and cuts out the opportunity for an eager fan to participate.
Overall, I’m bullish on the idea, and I think that authors, musicians, and creators should capitalize on what they’re producing in whatever makes sense for them and keeps it interesting for their audience.
