First Edition: Publica Hopes Author’s June ICO Will Be a Bestseller

Matt Kepnes plunged into full-time travel blogging and built a millennial-driven brand that has a quarter of a million Facebook followers and a million monthly website visitors. On June 6 he’ll test the depth of his fans’ pockets when he opens the first author initial coin offering on the Publica publishing platform.

Publica plans the ICO as a “marquee” rollout to a particularly receptive market of young first-adopters who, like Kepnes, consider themselves citizens of the world.

Publica’s goal is to illustrate to authors that its platform erases vexing difficulties inherent in monetizing their reputations and social media followings, says Josef Marc, Publica CEO and co-founder. Publica is headquartered in Riga, Latvia.

He and Kepnes are counting on the NomadicMatt community to erase the chicken-and-egg dilemma of the early adoption of new technology: how to attract enough pioneer users to create critical mass and convert the new technology or process from novel to normal.

Just as crowdfunding monetizes peer pressure for startups, book ICOs might erode embedded resistance when enough fans start asking favorite authors for crypto-enabled sales.

The ICO, which opens at 9 a.m. EDT on June 6, will be for tokens that give buyers an immediate download of Kepnes’ latest title: “Backpacker’s Guide to Europe.” One thousand book tokens will be available for $10 each.

Publica takes a 10 percent cut as a platform maintenance fee. The rest of the revenue goes to the author.

Publica’s tokens govern access to the books sold in its ICOs. Readers will be able to trade tokens or transfer them to friends, just as they do with paper books. There’s one key difference, however. When readers resell a book token, revenue will be automatically directed to the author’s digital wallet.