Resources and tips for the self-published author.

Publishing Startup Highlight – Widbook – Youtube for Books

by Miral Sattar •  July 16, 2013  •   Follow miralsattar

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Publishing startups are popping up like weeds. Widbook launched roughly a year ago, and is one that is seeming to gain some traction.

In simple terms you can refer to Widbook as  the Youtube for books. Their Widbook platform allows authors to collaborate and write with authors and book fans.

We like Widbook because they’ve gained some serious traction since their beta launch last year. We checked out some of the books on the site they already have a community of 26,000 authors and readers alike. Members of the site (which is completely free) can write their books online, get realtime feedback, follow each other, and create their own bookshelves.

Authors can start writing their books on Widbook and immediately start getting feedback. To put it simply it’s like a beta reader platform where authors can invite others to give them feedback on their work. You can also write in pieces to add to a given writers work that become part of the work if the author chooses to include it.

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The most popular Widbook to date?  “New Wonder: The book written in a mobile phone during a Round The World travel”, by Fernando Palacios (http://www.widbook.com/book/294).

So check it out and give it a whirl. Right now authors can’t export a book, but we do see this feature coming soon.

About Miral Sattar

Lover of books. CEO & founder of Bibliocrunch. Love storytelling in all its forms. Formerly TIME. I'm a new media entrepreneur who has worked in the media industry for 11 years. My mission is simple – to innovate the publishing industry with technology. My company has been featured in BBC World News, Money Magazine, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Forbes, WSJ, MediaBistro, PBS, Columbia Journalism Review, The Next Web, Publishers Weekly, and a bunch of other places. Bibliocrunch was also selected as The Next Big Thing in media by the Paley Center. I also used to run a popular South Asian culture blog called Divanee. Before I ran my own company and became a mom, I used to be on the board for several literacy organizations, and wrote a LOT more. Hopefully, when things are calmer I can go back to that! :)