I decided to publish this book and intend to license the rights to a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that then issues a Non Fungible Token (NFT). It would be a little odd to wax lyrical about the game changing nature of web3 while plugging into the traditional publishing industry. Publishing itself has gone through some pretty major supply side shifts already. It has already been unbundled and democratized but web3 offers some really exciting new opportunities for authors. I have therefore tried to combine the best of both worlds.

That said, the journey to publish this book as a DAO is not as easy as I first imagined, as I will explain in the book, we are still very much in the protocol era. Protocol development has been crucial to the advance of each era of the internet but it is only once the aApps have been developed on top of the protocols are those protocols made easy to use.  As such, figuring out how to use a DAO reminded me of trying to build a website back in the mid-90s, needing to learn HTML code and tinkering for hours to try and make it look good, always knowing at the same time that something big was happening.

The other complexity arose from the need to physically publish a book. Right now, web3 is very much geared toward the digital world but I wrote this book, not to preach to the already converted, crypto and web3 natives but business leaders and individuals who need to understand what it is and how it’s going to disrupt business-as-usual.  It was therefore imperative that it was available as a traditional printed book available to buy on Amazon and beyond. Not only that, but 70 percent of books bought on Amazon are still physical books. There is still something special about holding a book in our hands and reading from a page and not a screen. If I had pursued a pure on chain web3 route then I would be publishing this book on a decentralized storage platform such as IPFS (explained in the book) and you would be buying the book with crypto. 

Instead, I have chosen to work with experienced ‘publishing talent’ at White Fox, to get the best of editing, typesetting, book cover design, indexing and distribution, while being able to maintain 100 percent of the ownership rights. This ownership of copyright, which I would not have had with a traditional publisher, allowed me to then sell the rights to a DAO. 

Right now, there is not an easy bridge between old school publishing and web3 in some type of on-chain and off-chain hybrid but it is just a matter of time. In the meantime, as the book will be sold on Amazon and other leading book sellers, while it’s going to be owned by a DAO and ultimately the NFT holders who choose to buy advanced copies, collectables and own fractional rights to the book, the royalties will continue to be paid in dollars and will then need to be converted back to crypto and paid out to the token holders. 

I will therefore personally license the rights to the book to a UK Ltd company, called Web3 Book Ltd. I am a 100 percent shareholder of Web3 Book Ltd, and then I will sell this company to the web3bookDAO which is both a DAO and Delaware C Corp  as the US recognizes DAOs as a legal structure, using a platform called Ototco. To issue the NFT I am going to be pre-selling copies of the book, other collectibles as well as the royalties from the book sales. I will then use a NFT platform such as Rarible, Looksrate or Opensea to offer different NFT tiers with limited edition appeal such as a signed copy of the book and a percentage of royalties to the top tier package which will also include the ability to own an entire chapter from the book and I will personally give a keynote talk on that chapter or a tech topics that is of particular interest to you. 

In order to work with the on-chain and off-chain royalty flow Web3 Limited UK will collect royalty payments from White Fox and then convert the US dollars to stablecoins using our banking partner and then these stablecoins will flow back to the DAO treasury wallet and then from there back to the NFT holders. The DAO will need to continue to market, print and distribute the book and will hold a balance in cash to do this. This is purely an experiment, with NFT buyers being part of an experiment and the chance to own something unique like this.