There is now a startup that helps people to independently publish book, namely NulisBuku.com. Although helpful in publishing books, NulisBuku does not provide means for cooperation among enthusiasts/writers to collaborate, especially online. Volpen is the solution for those who wish to write a book and collaborate with others for the completion of the manuscript.
According to its founder, Daniel Liejardi, Volpen has been established since December last year. Initially he used English and recently added a multilingual feature so Bahasa Indonesia speaking users can use Volpen to maximum. Daniel himself makes sure that Volpen is 100% made by Indonesian people and he hopes that it could obtain at least 3000 new Bahasa Indonesia writers in the next two months.
Volpen has a relatively easy mechanism. You as the writer can start a new post or continue another writer’s work. Creating a whole chapter in one go is better. Later, submitted writings will be voted and the one that gets most votes will be the official continuation of the ongoing story. There is already a book sample; consists of seven chapters and written by Volpen’s personel, this book is intended to be a reference of how you develop your writing.
Later on, every finished book will be offered to Amazon, Kobo or other online bookstore to gain profit. Volpen provides menu on the revenue sharing. For example, if a book worth %0.99 and is sold 10 thousand copies, the total revenue of the book that will be shared is $7500 (@75% to the authors, 25% for Volpen).
So if you’ve done 10% of the book then the revenue you would get is 10% of total revenue or worth $750. You can imagine how much you could get if the book is sold for 1 million copies and all of that is the result of your own creation.
As for the display, to be honest, Volpen is less inspiring. In my opinion, the dominant chosen color of gray is still “playing safe” and may not be a good creativity ambience. Try to compare it with NulisBuku.com that has striking blend of red everywhere. I’m probably not a novelist but I think it needs more development on the UX to make Volpen more inspiring.
To further increase the interest of authors to use this platform, Volpen plans to hold a competition and contest in the near future. Let’s wait to hear from them for further information.
The concept is quite similar to cerpenista.com, the UI looks more like an email rather than a social site. Not sure how volpen can actually thrive since the strength of a book is mostly because of the writer. That would just fade away if done collectively.
May work for cook books, or short story rolled into one book and things needing crowdsourcing contents. But that’s just about it.