I see booklamp as integrated into other sites

[soup physics]

I think there are really two way to go for booklamp (one not excluding the other).

1 - Booklamp becomes a website where users go to find books, and the income comes from ads, but mainly links to where you can get those books.

2 - More than a site you go to, to find books, it becomes integrated into sites like amazon, google books, libraries, and any site that sells or offers books in any way. These sites of course will pay for integrating booklamp into their sites.

I think the second one is where the money is and that is it bound to happen, since these sites automatically will be asking to use booklamp soon enough.

[Aaron Stanton]

"these sites automatically will be asking to use booklamp soon enough"

I like your confidence.    I certainly think that if - if things move in that direction - BookLamp could have an impact on the publishing industry, and the companies that help make it happen.

We'll see. 

Aaron

[Cory Dee]

As someone that works for a library, as a web developer, I would love to integrate this into my site. Referring people to another site to look for recommendations is counter productive, and results in too much legwork for the user - it MUST be integrated.

[Kendra Carlson]

I want to start out by saying, the first time I saw BookLamp.org, I was sad   I was only sad, however, because it's nearly everything I envisioned in a site like this and never knew how to do.  For my Graduate work, I wanted to work on something very similar to this, but with a focus on Young Adult Literature. 

In response to the post above, what I envisioned was an interactive site, which, after you have found the next book you would like to read, would help you to get to that book - be that by connecting you with Barnes and Noble or your local library.  A connection with WorldCAT could be useful for searching local libraries. 

You are in the process of creating a tool that will be incredibly useful for teachers, librarians, parents and students.  This is one step in getting young adults reading more.  Often, if we can get them to find just one book that they are interested in, it's not enough; however, with this tool, we may be able to keep them reading. 

[Kendra Carlson]

Also, though this probably doesn't fit in this thread, another aspect which would make it most definitely useful to the above people I mentioned, is a way to chart the reading level of the book.  I am guessing as well-educated adults you might not be terribly concerned with this, but the general public, educators, and youth may be more so.

[Stephen Rollins]

I think that the reading difficulty is an aspect that BookLamp measures.  At least, I'm pretty sure it is.  Can't remember what the word for it is (density, perhaps?  That doesn't quite seem right though) but I know that they talked about it somewhere a while ago.  I noticed it, thought "Hey, that sounds neat," posted about it once or twice, but I forgot about it now.

Or maybe I'm completely making that all up.  But surely it can't be anything difficult to be added to the BookLamp system.

[Mic Marvin]

I second the idea of integration with other websites.

I think it should be free for non-profit sites/personal sites to use though. I would also like to be free to contribute my own books to the database, one giant database that every site that uses your program contributes too.... that would be fun.

[Daniel Bowen]

Mic,

   We intend to provide the recommendation service free of charge... just show up to the site and search - anyone.  And accepting books from users will be a part of the system (Writer's Project) - so I believe (Aaron could answer this more accurately) that we do intend to add those texts to the system, but I don't see it being a free reign sort of thing allowing anyone and their brother to add their own books to the database... now there will probably be some sort of user library, but to receive a recommendation on, for example, a book that you wrote, we would have to run the text through our algorithms.  This last statement is a part of the "Writer's Project."  A quick glance at past forum posts should reveal information along those lines.

As for adding your own books for free... I can't imagine that process being free of "cost," because as I mentioned, we cannot just upload every work of creative fiction that gets written.  If any price were to be associated with this, our goal is that it would be one that is more than manageable for even the casual author.  Aaron will tell you that he has the little guy in mind.  He has written a book of his own with the same end-goal to be published.  The purpose of the Writer's Project (along with the Publisher's Project) is to give authors an alternative - and we think, more empirical and cost-effective - avenue to publish their hard work.  This sort of "vetting" process should maintain the integrity of our database of books, while not swamping the system with my Creative Writing Final Project from junior year of college.

Hope that helps.

-Dan

[Mic Marvin]

Hey Dan,
     I wasn't aware of the three aspects to the BookLamp Project. To be honest, I'm only really interested in the ability to search for a book and have similar books suggested... the Pandora 'esque feature if you will. Ideally this would be something I could offer on my own website and not be dependent on a third party website (booklamp.org) being available.

    Let's get hypothetical, imagine that I run a public library and I wish to make more accurate recommendations to my patrons. A recommendation system like what's seen here at booklamp would be ideal. Now seeing that I am a library and I have an average of 30,000 books in my collection which have been scanned and OCR'd because I'm a forward thinking library.... How cool would it be if I could run the booklamp algorithms on my array of hard drives and then give my patrons tailored recommendations based on what's available at my local branch?

     I'm not sure if this is a direction that BookLamp is looking to head into, but I think it's one that would be greatly beneficial to the whole world.

-Mic

   

[Mandi Taylor]

How cool would it be if I could run the booklamp algorithms on my array of hard drives and then give my patrons tailored recommendations based on what's available at my local branch?

VERY cool.  I'd love to hear what the BookLamp team has to say about this - I think that would be an amazing application.

[Jo Red]

Mic,

   We intend to provide the recommendation service free of charge... just show up to the site and search - anyone.  And accepting books from users will be a part of the system (Writer's Project) - so I believe (Aaron could answer this more accurately) that we do intend to add those texts to the system, but I don't see it being a free reign sort of thing allowing anyone and their brother to add their own books to the database... now there will probably be some sort of user library, but to receive a recommendation on, for example, a book that you wrote, we would have to run the text through our algorithms.  This last statement is a part of the "Writer's Project."  A quick glance at past forum posts should reveal information along those lines.

As for adding your own books for free... I can't imagine that process being free of "cost," because as I mentioned, we cannot just upload every work of creative fiction that gets written.  If any price were to be associated with this, our goal is that it would be one that is more than manageable for even the casual author.  Aaron will tell you that he has the little guy in mind.  He has written a book of his own with the same end-goal to be published.  The purpose of the Writer's Project (along with the Publisher's Project) is to give authors an alternative - and we think, more empirical and cost-effective - avenue to publish their hard work.  This sort of "vetting" process should maintain the integrity of our database of books, while not swamping the system with my Creative Writing Final Project from junior year of college.

Hope that helps.

-Dan

Glad to see you have some business plan going - to charge authors to upload their work. Nice plan, but I don't think it has strong potential :-T  Here's my Market Analysis of your plan:

1.  Basically you expect authors to "pay" to upload their work. But it depends how much you will charge for it though.  If it's over $20 a pop, then I don't think it has much chance. Anywhere below $5 has potential. Even FREE is only promising. The reason I'm making this speculation is that , well think about it, you're basically trying to promote a "banner ad" system where advertisers would pay so much for "chance" of exposure.  However, there is no "guarantee" of exposure because their books might not even come up in the recommendation list. In which case they would've waisted their investment :-)

2.  In contrast, if you can "guarantee" that they would get exposure, then you could charge a LOT of money for each work published, anywhere from $300 and up for every book uploaded with a "guarantee of exposure" is realistic.  However, again, you only have limited real-estate space to display ads, and viewers would not check out every single ad displayed !

So is there a solution ??   Good news is, There is one :-)  It can practically turn Booklamp into another money-making machine like GOOGLE.  You just need to change your business model , and running your algorithms is "one of" the key ingredients. 

Another issue is, how much of the target market can you penetrate (in the most cost-effective way), and how quickly ??  Again I have the answer for this.

If you guys are interested to learn more, we can discuss via email. Also you can forward this market analysis to your partners in Amazon.  Maybe we can strike a deal ;-)

Cheers,
Jo

[Stephen Rollins]

The reason I'm making this speculation is that , well think about it, you're basically trying to promote a "banner ad" system where advertisers would pay so much for "chance" of exposure.  However, there is no "guarantee" of exposure because their books might not even come up in the recommendation list. In which case they would've waisted their investment :-)

This system is meant to add the books to the database, right?  Not just make banner ads for whoever buys one.

If you pay to upload a book of your own, of course you can't be guaranteed exposure.  But I thought that's how BookLamp worked.  The whole point is that people search for books that are similar to what they'd read.  Just because you payed to get your book in the database doesn't mean it qualifies for every potential reader.  However, the more readers using the service and the more searches that get performed, the more likely you are to be discovered by potential readers.  So it's really an investment more than cheap advertising.

[Jo Red]

This system is meant to add the books to the database, right?  Not just make banner ads for whoever buys one.

If you pay to upload a book of your own, of course you can't be guaranteed exposure.  But I thought that's how BookLamp worked.  The whole point is that people search for books that are similar to what they'd read.  Just because you payed to get your book in the database doesn't mean it qualifies for every potential reader.  However, the more readers using the service and the more searches that get performed, the more likely you are to be discovered by potential readers.  So it's really an investment more than cheap advertising.

I think it is wishful thinking if authors actually come forth and upload their books - for a fee too !  Think about it, $20 is no big money, I know, but you can buy pizza with that, and that's guaranteed. On the other hand, $20 on Booklamp to painstakingly scan every page of your book and upload it for a FEE, and no guarantee of exposure - well go figure.

Given the above case, can you even hope for $50 or $100 fee per book submitted ??  The possibility diminishes exponentially for every dollar increase over $20. That's business.

I can turn this business around though ;-)

[Daniel Bowen]

Jo, I don't really understand where you've gone with your own notion of authors uploading books to our system.  Through the writer's project tools will be available to help the author with the manuscript.  If you're talking about the publiher's project then you're on the right track with the Google model, but I don't think it's possible (as Stephen mentioned) to guarantee exposure - that defeats the whole idea of targeted marketing - we can't guarantee the level of exposure.  Now we could better inform the author/agent/publisher about the exposure they might receive and you will get some exposure.

Again, I'm not sure where $20 came from, but we intend to have a service to compete with WritersMarket.com - or along those lines.  Of course the services we can offer will be very different.  Hope that helps.

-Dan

[Therin]

I don't know about you guys, but I've spent more in postage, entry fees or printing fees to have my manuscripts end up in some publisher or agent's slush pile with just as much chance of exposure as Booklamp seems to offer and with even less recommendation.  If booklamp works then when the manuscript is brought to the person's attention it is what they are looking for as opposed to what I and the many other teeming millions think they want to see. 

Never mind the possibilities for someone like me in a country other than the US where our publishing industry is tiny and the chances of making it even smaller...  Booklamp may be a way for all writers, regardless of location, to access one of the biggest publishing markets on earth.   

And that can only be a good thing.