{"id":2951,"date":"2011-06-23T22:48:26","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T22:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/2011\/06\/byliner\/"},"modified":"2011-06-23T22:48:26","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T22:48:26","slug":"byliner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/byliner\/","title":{"rendered":"Byliner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.byliner.com\">Byliner<\/a> is a worthwhile new website.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s purpose is twofold:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>to link to and promote long form non-fiction<\/li>\n<li>to sell original ebooks in that genre under the Byliner Originals imprint<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The site came to prominance when it released <a href=\"http:\/\/byliner.com\/originals\/three-cups-of-deceit\">Three Cups of Deceit<\/a> by Jon Krakauer a couple of months ago. Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air and Into The Wild, amongst others, both of which have been filmed &#8211; the latter by Sean Penn. Three Cups is an investigative piece of journalism into the deeds of Greg Mortenson, a man who&#8217;s become famous &#8211; especially in the US &#8211; for raising money for schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.<br \/>\nFor the first few days, the piece was given away free. It&#8217;s now a $2.99 ebook.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s been followed up by a further series of original pieces all available for between $0.99 and $5.99.<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s their business model &#8211; promote these pieces. But surrounding it, there&#8217;s the recommendation engine and the ability to track favourite authors.<br \/>\nAnd suddenly, that made me think. I remember that I used to use a site a few years ago that allowed me to track favourite authors. And wasn&#8217;t it called&#8230; Byliner?<br \/>\nYes it was. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gyford.com\/\">Phil Gyford<\/a> created the site sometime around 2000, and it finally closed in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gyford.com\/phil\/writing\/2008\/09\/19\/byliner.php\">2008<\/a>. I used Byliner quite a bit for a handful of authors, getting the relevant RSS feeds into Bloglines.<br \/>\nThe new Byliner is a very different beast. And it&#8217;s good to see another worthwhile site using the URL.<br \/>\nOver on BoingBoing they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2011\/06\/23\/this-could-be-inspir.html\">reacted<\/a> to news of the site with:<br \/>\n<em>This could be inspiring, or the set up for a joke. You pick.<\/em><br \/>\nBut that referred to a Nieman Journalism Lab <a href=\"http:\/\/www.niemanlab.org\/2011\/06\/a-fan-club-for-writers-byliner-launches\/\">blog post<\/a> which described it thus:<br \/>\n<em>Byliner.com, which launches today, wants to be the Pandora of narrative nonfiction.<\/em><br \/>\nI think they use the Pandora comparison in terms its ability to let you <I>discover<\/I> new material. In fact the Nieman piece by Lois Beckett is well worth a read.<br \/>\nThe one thing I will say about the model that Byliner is attempting &#8211; it does persuade that perhaps&#8230; just perhaps&#8230; I might find use for an ebook reader. And that&#8217;s something I wasn&#8217;t sure I&#8217;d ever say. The free Krakauer piece was available as a PDF and I carefully printed it out (even using the &#8220;booklet&#8221; function of a photocopier). But DRM being what it is (although could JK Rowling of all people, be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-drm_b32960\">challenging<\/a> that?), follow up Byliner Originals only appear to be available in Kindle format (or, occassionally, as audiobooks). I think it&#8217;s because despite having piles of magazines littering my flat, just waiting for those articles to get read, the format is more transient. The magazines will eventually be thrown out. So I don&#8217;t mind longform articles only existing being on a digital reader.<br \/>\nOne small issue is that the site only links to the Amazon.com version of books where I&#8217;m prevented from purchasing titles as a UK resident. Amazon doesn&#8217;t even provide direct links to the same ebook on the UK site. You have to search for it once you&#8217;ve clicked through to Amazon.co.uk. <strike>Furthermore, Byliner&#8217;s current bestselling title &#8211; The White House Wants to Get Him by Glenn L. Carle &#8211; is, for unfathomable reasons, not available in the UK until July 15<\/strike> [Update: It&#8217;s not out anywhere until July 15. And John at Byliner tells me they&#8217;re looking into improving international links.].<br \/>\nNowithstanding all of that, I very much hope that the site suceeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Byliner is a worthwhile new website. It&#8217;s purpose is twofold: to link to and promote long form non-fiction to sell original ebooks in that genre under the Byliner Originals imprint The site came to prominance when it released Three Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer a couple of months ago. Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}