FutureBook is the publishing industry’s end-of-year gathering to talk about what’s next. Publica was a surprise and yet not a surprise at all. Advance interest in our talk led the organizers to move us to the big room.

I expected newbie questions about blockchains but no, they were already on everyone’s mind. Delegates came prepared with excellent questions.

The outstanding theme of the conference was authentic community engagement, like the Forbes article I blogged last week. Some approach it with entertainment and multimedia, some with events, some with interactive creative formats. Publica fit right in because we approach it with book token launches. Our tribe of Publicans knows all about that!

Highlights I learned from the audience at our presentation:

Authors want control. Authors want cryptomoney too. Money matters.

Publishers are looking at blockchains because their authors ask. But they don’t want to commit to an in-house development team. Publica offers a way to outsource the blockchain parts. Some publishers assigned delegates to attend Publica’s presentation.

Back office software providers are looking at blockchains because their customers ask. Same position as publishers.

Institutions such as libraries, universities, academic journals, and others, aren’t well-served by the DRM/EULA solutions offered by general-purpose online ebook publishing models designed for consumers’ private use. Publica’s READ Tokens model looks right to them.

Publica is a Partner Member of The Alliance For Independent Authors. I asked the audience about them and the report was 100% thumbs-up. They’re very well respected for what they’ve achieved for authors over many years. And ALLi’s keyword image is remarkably the same as Publica’s mission:

I learned from others’ presentations:

Gen Z is an important new market. They’re skeptical of established rules. They consider themselves — just like our Publicans, I’d say — experts because they grew up with Google and YouTube.

They consider themselves to be creatives, social, conscious of their safety and privacy. They expect the Internet to be all video but do you know what they do when they take their all-important detox time? They read books. They love books. Except the books someone tells them to read. They make up their own minds.

I learned from talking to delegates:

In nations that speak a non-English native language, of course they’re interested in English-language books. But their local authors? They want them in their local language. And they don’t sign in to the USA/UK dominant English-language online bookstores.

Book quality is a law in Denmark! Meaning, libraries and schools and government-sponsored institutions shun poor quality books.

What’s next? I said we’ll be back next year and by then, they’ll have a Publica ereader app/wallet on their smartphones.

The blockchain for books is here, it’s open for business, right on time for Gen Z, it’s marketed the right way, and we’ve got The Publicans on our side. With all this going for us, we can’t lose.

Here’s the only slide I needed for our presentation:

A big THANK YOU to Kristin Over-Rein of Boldbooks.no for vlogging us live from FutureBook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9NuswuRdjo

And for recording my presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kg_MaDE--8

Until I brought her up to the podium to explain the author’s journey and where Publica fits into it from Boldbook’s perspective:

Publica is developing the author’s journey right now. If you’re an author or just want to keep an eye on the latest developments, click here.