Vikram of BookBuzzr Interviewed by Chad Lilly of Inner Circle Publishing

A few days ago, I was interviewed by Chad Lilly of Inner Circle Publishing. It was a fun, conversation that covered plenty of important topics related to online book-marketing technologies, internet marketing for books, book-promotion through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and much more. You can listen to the interview here or below.
Incidentally, Chad Lilly has had a phenomenal amount of interest generated in his book - "uncommon sense" ever since he put up the book on BookBuzzr. Over 2,000 people have already viewed his book and he mentions that he has experienced record sales on Amazon. So that's additional validation for BookBuzzr. You can check out Chad's book below:



You can also see a full transcript of the interview below (Thanks to Ranga, my colleague, for taking the time to put this transcript together :))

Chad: The world of words may never be the same. Now that the game of promotion and exposures been outdated into a whole level of inner action. Well if actually one allows books to be read worldwide by a single click of the mouse. How? that’s that’s the question we are talking about tonight on our talkradio, so thank you for joining us, I am Chad William. Right, we are gonna find out the latest technology in digital book. Some of you may have heard it and especially those of you on twitter , I Know it is being mentioned quite a bit, it’s called bookbuzzr and tonight the founder of bookbuzzr himself vikram narayan is joining us all the way from India to explain this amazing application for sharing books online. Now we are taking callers at 646-716-8138 so please feel free to participate with your questions and comments and a special mention to our friends and family on twitter-id, these some of you wanna chat, right now thanks for being with us live and please share a little time and people know in the industry what’s going on and some of you have been in the promising business for quite some time now but I have never found anything that even remotely compares or compete with the exposure that we have been provided through bookbuzzr and a fReado just in the past 30 days. So if you are an author it does mean one of you listening to the night show, so that it does mean we bring on Mr Vikram obviously from India I believe and vikram are you with us now?

Vikram: Yes I am, Good evening Chad or shall I say good morning it’s 5:30 am out here

Chad: 5:30 am! and am I correct are you in India?

Vikram: Yes I am in Bangalore, India

Chad: Excellent, excellent wonder phone line does sound good, ok the next thing is well vikram how am I pronouncing? Am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Vikram: You are doing it perfectly well; it’s like Vic, Vic like in victor and rum like in the drink rum, Vikram

Chad: Vikram ok excellent excellent. as far the bookbuzzr story which however is pretty fascinating and I wonder that would be the best place to start how did this first come about?

Vikram: sure, well I have an author friend of mine, his name is chetan dhruve and he has written a book called “why your boss is programmed to be a dictator” and the book has become something of a sleeper head either it hasn’t selling the number of copies every year so that many years, didn’t do pretty well for the publisher that have got chetan and we were having a little conversation one morning and while talking chetan was lamenting about the fact that much of his online marketing efforts were getting wasted, the problem was that he didn’t know what exactly he should be doing, there was no process, there was no easy way to go about it and he had all these new networks and social networks bringing up all the time, you had facebook then at that point of time twitter was just emerging, myspace, so he needed a process and he needed a simple way to get about, getting a word about his book out there.
So I asked this question, I said if you had a magic wand like a magic wand and you had to, have the perfect book marketing application, online book marketing technology what would it be? And so chetan started describing what he would want.
At some point if you get that this can be something big or at least it can be something very important for a lot of authors and started putting down our thoughts on paper and so he said I would want ideally I would want my static book cover image so when someone comes to my author website or my blog and they see the cover image
of my book that’s all they see but ideally they want I would want them to be able to interact with it and tempt them enough so that they would actually look inside the book. So when a potential reader walks into a bookstore the reader looks at up any book but also has the option to open that book and flip through it. Now a lot of this is missing in from many of the website. Sure some of them do have the option where they provide a read an excerpt kind of a link but that still is not tempting enough for a reader to click on. So he mentioned that ideally he would want this to be something that would tempt a reader into opening and sampling the book, so that was one and then he also mentioned that if someone really likes the book they would want to share it on their own facebook profile or blog or myspace profile or they should be able to share the link on networks like , dig, reditt etc., and so that became the starting point and within a few months we had an application run up and running and its taken off pretty well in the last couple of months since launch.


Chad: That’s That’s great I am glad you even brought that up of getting people to look inside the book because I personally I feel that is the most powerful marketing tool that
We can have as authors and you had mentioned, of course there is myspace, twitter, facebook social media sites cropping up by a dozen every single day but how a lot of people are using those services already and yet they are not getting the exposure ,they are not getting people to actually open their books and that’s what excites me about bookbuzzr is it actually allows people to open the books and we’ have gonna way that’s different from everything I have ever seen and personally vikram I am not, I am a, I am a book person, I like a book, I like the smell, the CO, I like the.. Whole the book and always with bookbuzzr and its application it’s actually enjoyable to read a book on screen and I am, I am really amazed by that and I would like to know more about the actual fact and how you guys actually created this?

Vikram: Yes. So, we tried very hard, the initial version looked more like showing up like a document, like a PDF, like a better version of a PDF but again and again the point came up that the simulation of a page turning is very vital for the book reading experience and so we went back and we also throw out almost like two months of work that we had done at that point in time and went back and redesign the whole application and said that this is going to become central even though it seems like a trivial issue for a lot of people they say ok I am reading on the internet, I am reading a web page so why does it have to have a flip and at that point we asked ourselves also this question many times but I would say that chetan was instrumental in that because as an author he said I want my book to have that page turning effect I feel so much better about my book when that feature is there and so we went back and we did quite a bit of accurasion and finally settled on this format where the page while turning if you click it and drag it turns like a flip book and we think it’s very central to the whole experience.

Chad: it’s not just the because of the very cool application and widget the way it works but I am actually most impressed with this when you are reading it, when you are reading any of the books that available on bookbuzzr, it allows the reader to zoom in, it allows the reader to read the book on screen as if you are actually holding it in your hands and I gotta tell you that I think that is very powerful because that an even amount of authors obviously use their book cover on the website, on the blogs whether they are promoting it, just because someone sees the book cover does not mean that they open the book even if that is an option provided a long visit, while you seem to have created something that actually inspires people to look inside of the book and to me that’s I think obviously that’s one of the most powerful things that we have seen in already to get people actually look at our books. I am sure you must be, if there is any, first of all how many authors do you have? How many books uploaded on bookbuzzr now?

Vikram: we have got over 2500 authors and a similar number of books available on bookbuzzr now. It’s in about 4-6 months of n since we have launched and getting things right so that’s where we are right now. We are growing in a very haphazard fashion but everyday we grow we get about 10, 12 authors sometime, sometimes we get like in the region of a 100 on some special days but essentially we think that we are gonna hit this tipping point at some point every author is going to say, hey what I have seen this on other authors website and wanted for myself and at that point we expect growth to be exponential so we intend to, keep pushing this till we hit that point after this which we think it’s going to be an exponential explosive kind of growth with authors adopting the widget.
We have to think that it’s a function of what additional value we are going to add to authors so consequently we are doing a number of things in the backend to make sure that authors get additional exposure and find more readers, so that something we have been working on.

Chad: Excellent, you do me a favour vikram, install the system into your phone unless some speaker phone or if you could get just a little closer too so that I wanna make sure that people can hear you clearly

Vikram: sure, sure, I guess it’s the smaller room, it’s, I am in the office this morning so is this a little better.

Chad: That is a little better and it’s just could be the 14,000 miles between us.

Vikram: Fine

Chad: , I am curious such things a lot of obviously new authors, unknown authors are using bookbuzzr, we are actually in the middle of transferring all the books we offer to inner circle publishing and inner circle press, we are setting them up so that the look inside the book feature is mainly through bookbuzzr but I am curious that any of the known authors I mean is Stephen king is using that if not why not?

Vikram: well, we haven’t designed this for Stephen king, our goal is really the the smaller or the newer author who is looking to get started, the other day we got this email from an author who said he mentioned how bookbuzzr had helped him and how bookbuzzr has helped the sales on Amazon and then he mentioned thank you for helping us little guys get started and that’s that’s really was very satisfying for us, we think that the Stephen king of the world will probably use this product but at a later point in time but we have had some very interesting authors use the product for example the one of India’s largest IT outsourcing company it’s called the Wipro, it’s they compete with Accenture and IBM on a number of deals, their chief marketing officer Jessie Paul has written a book called “No Money marketing” and she found us on the internet, she put up her book on bookbuzzr and started using it on her website and started talking about the product and again she is probably one of the biggest names in the corporate world and she is using this technology, so we have all these kinds of interesting things happening but at anyway our focus right now is on making sure that we provide a platform that will allow viral marketing effects and best place for starters for authors who needed, who needed the most.

Chad: you just mentioned something about Amazon I would love to see their instantaneous and aggression towards, even on Amazon if you could even post a link to the bookbuzzr or even having Amazon in place bookbuzzr and actually putting the widget on Amazon site, is that being considered or any links with that?

Vikram: Well we do have this huge Amazon integration project that is underway, we are looking at every integration point that’s out there, obviously we also need to talk to Amazon at some point. At the moment Amazon’s wide number of features, number of API’s that allow you to integrate your application with theirs, we are working on that, and that’s gonna be there in a couple of months we are gonna have a number of Amazon integration points.

Chad: Wow, so you are taking something that’s phenomenal now and just about to make it a whole lot better and probably global.

Vikram: Yes, Thank you, you are welcome.

Chad: vikram we do have callers on the line and I wanna encourage dozen people to call and especially authors because I know every author is asking themselves the same question how do I get people to see my book versus the other 10,000 that just came up this morning and we got the guy on the line that seems to be able to provide the better results so call us on 702 you are online here with the talk radio and I am speaking live with CEO of BookBuzzr Vikram. Call us on the 702 are you with us live?

Rob Wilson: Can you hear me Chad?

Chad: Hi, can hear you and I recognise the voice. It sounds like Rob Wilson.

Rob Wilson: Hey there!

Chad: Now what kind of questions do you have for Vikram this evening?

Rob Wilson: I was just basically gain some information but on this BookBuzzr and probably on Amazon how, how will that expand the persons things and how can I get like evenly, even bigger than that is what I really curious about.

Chad: Good question.

Vikram: Ok. Rob, , thank you for calling in and I am just trying to get a a sense of what you have just asked. Could you please repeat your question? It seems like I could not get most of that so.

Rob: Ok, I am trying to say is actually you get it tie to Amazon and things like that what would be the best thing for the author to do to even make it bigger for themselves using the BookBuzzr so there is gotta be some many other ways

Vikram: Sure. So if you leave Amazon, apart from Amazon the two biggest networks out there are Face book and Twitter. So the bookbuzzr process encourages you to first of all upload your book or your book extract on to the site. It creates a little book widget so think of it as a replacement for your book cover and it would go everywhere that your book cover goes it would go there and once you do that you can post your book, your bookbuzzr book widget on sites like facebook so on your facebook profile you would put up your bookbuzzr book widget so when someone visits your facebook profile, your friends look at your profile they would see your, the widget and they would be able to flip those pages, check out where they can buy your book, check out links to your interviews or media mentions that might be there. Learn more about the book all without leaving your facebook profile and finally they might be tempted to clicking on the full screen view and view the book in full screen mode so that’s one big integration point and that’s a very easy thing to do the entire thing takes about five minutes and essentially what you are doing is making sure that all your friends know about your book and have an easy way to share your book on their own profile so when a friend comes to your, your profile and he or she says hey that’s a neat looking book widget and I like this book and this the author is a friend of mine maybe I should help him to promote this book on my own profile what they would do his click on the share button and again within thirty to, thirty seconds to a minute they can share it on their own page, on their own facebook page and so you are hoping that your book captures the attention of your friend and then their friends and a viral effect takes in, a viral marketing effect takes in and there is also another option where you can set up bookbuzzr to tweet about your book on twitter. So every time you could say every time a hundred plus people read my book extract a sample of my book I like it to be mentioned on twitter now you obviously need it to set it up very carefully if not you would annoy some of your followers, you want to be active on twitter but if you set this up, this will automatically send out tweets on twitter and finally bookbuzzr also have a options where you can send out an email with a link to your, to your bookbuzzr book widget and to all of your friends so on gmail, yahoo you can just with two clicks you can send out mails to all your friends and again it provides you an easy interface where you can friends can also share it with their own friends and it goes on.

Chad: I am sorry to interrupt there but I wanted to add something in there because what you, what you just said Vikram is the with the cooperation aspect I mean that is how things are done anyways with the cooperation and one of the greatest things about bookbuzzr that I have seen is that share function because not only can you invite people to look directly to inside of the book but with one click anyone who does designate with it anyone who does wanna share to their own facebook, myspace, twitter profile any social media or even on their own blog or website with one click they can share that and that with making cooperation, easy to accomplish we are gaining more and I really appreciate the fact that bookbuzzr is set this up so conveniently, to be automated for other people to share your work. As vikram I had quite a bit of success on with “Uncommon Sense”, one of the book that we have posted on bookbuzzr and the reason that’s been so successful is the cooperation of other people on twitter, on facebook, myspace that designate with the work and allow to share it and you have something that powerful that that I think that’s what which sets you apart.

Rob: Hey Chad again one more question there with you. Can you put that like on stuff your blog and things like that?

Chad: Absolutely

Vikram: Yes you can put it up on blog, on blogger, you can put it up on blogger, it does not work with wordpress right now, with the wordpress site itself. We are actually going to get in touch with the wordpress and find out why that is they are a lot more strict with this application so we are going to be getting in touch with wordpress but it works perfectly well with blogger.You can put it up on blogger may be with two clicks so basically on your blogspot account you can get that up and running and most other blogs it should work we have tested it.

Chad: Absolutely and you notice actually I just noticed that there are over a hundred and fifty different share option to post to blog blog, Digg there is just so many other more it everyday but bookbuzzr has already set up to initiate that so that if you are a member on any other social media site with one click you can post that book directly to that organisation and I think that that’s also incredible.

Chad: Rob, thank you so much for calling and loved to have you on our show and I appreciate you in putting questions. You got to be thanking much to vikram we loved you from here otherwise hang out on the line and

Rob: Yeah, I just wanna thank him also having this call because it is very enlightening for me.

Vikram: Thank you Rob, my pleasure

Chad: Excellent and I appreciate him calling as well, Rob is actually one of the author of inner circle publishing and I see a few of them in the chat room as well, all of our books are being uploaded to bookbuzzr I said but one of the thing I want to mention is the widget design, I actually, I do like it, I do like it but I am considering have you ever thought about making it available in different formats. So that you have one that exactly what you have, may be another one with more looks something exactly like the book cover.

Vikram: well, yes that is the one thing that we have been having it for some time now eternally we call it has “BookBuzzr Chota”. Chota is an Indian word which means small so the current version of the bookbuzzr widget is slightly larger than a book cover. It’s design to fit in the sidebar space but we realize that some sidebars may be smaller or some place, some people, some authors may want smaller a smaller version of bookbuzzr so that is something that we are working on. In the meanwhile there is also another option which is the email signature option. Have you seen that Chad? That feature, the email signature feature?

Chad: Yes, which makes your email signature you mean?

Vikram: Right, It makes your email signature. So one could potentially use that email signature there but this is something that we are working on and I think that’s a fantastic idea and now that you have mentioned that on this call it’s something that we are gonna go back and accelerate and see if we can make it smaller so when you say smaller, you mention how small would you wanted to be?

Chad: well it’s still just a several different options but may be a small widget. Something comparable to you guys using an email signature and on our inner circle publishing book pages we actually have a very large book covers so that people can see the book just as much as they can but that obviously not bigger than I am and I just thought that instead of this small widget may be we can have an option for a larger one but one thing that I really really appreciate is the bookbuzzr is actually it’s own independent book from loading website I mean for instance on Uncommon Sense we have listed which gives you the options to list anywhere that the author is appeared, any shows, any other links, where to buy it? So essentially this one small widget is effectively in entire website, it’s all about that author and all about that book and again for that to be one click away from being shared with everyone in the world I got to compliment you my young friend I think it’s amazing.
Vikram: Thank you, it’s, just looking authors and also chetan’s input which has been very vital in this whole thing.

Chad: What is the most creative use of the bookbuzzr that you have seen to gain exposure because again every author asks the same question? How do I get people look at my book? What are some of the creative ways you think other authors use bookbuzzr to get exposure for their own work?

Vikram: Well I have seen this being posted on blog that’s being done quite often. We have seen it, seen people creating groups on LinkedIin and sharing their books on with those groups. It works very well for non-section books. If you are an established expert and you got your own little group on LinkedIn going then you want to share it. We have seen some authors put it up right on top on the top right hand corner of their site where the, where the banner is, where the top header is. Have you seen them put it up over there? So yeah, those are some of the place users that we have seen. Or we have seen people using it on Myspace; we have seen non-English authors use it, so yeah those are some of the users that we have seen.

Chad: Actually I got a lot of, lot of folks on Twitter asking on that day I had mentioned about the bookbuzzr I had mentioned and there are a quite a few people that they just don’t know about bookbuzzr here, hopefully this show lets authors know more about it because again if you are an author and you have a book out there and you have a PDF file of that text block there is really no reason it shouldn’t be on bookbuzzr right now.

Vikram: Yes and if you are an author typically you spend the largest amount of time on the cover image, typically the , the goal of a cover, of the book cover is so that the potential reader picks it up and looks at the cover, looks at the tag line of the book then turns the book over and looks at the back cover and then the third step in the process would be you would look inside the book. So most when you could do this online and you just stick in an image of your book that not likely to encourage this kind of usage pattern. So the goal behind bookbuzzr really is to simulate some of those experiences that happened in your live real bookshop where you walk in, you look at the book, you stumbled upon a book and you turn it over you look at the back cover then you flip inside so we are trying to make that easier.

Chad: And you thus maintain a great job with that unless you mention that this widget can actually be embedded for those of you on blogtalk that hosted on our shows. This is the show now if you are watching this you see in the show description we have actually placed the bookbuzzr widget followed by books on Uncommon Sense and as you can see its right there actually in the show description so I think that’s very very powerful. Anyone hosting their own blogtalk show here might be something they consider you can click that share function, grab the code, post it directly in your description of your blogtalk show and the other one thing is seeing your book.

Vikram: And typically in Indian philosophy you have this notion that when the student is ready the teacher appears and with books we believe the same thing. when the reader is ready the book appears and hopefully its going to be in bookbuzzr format as a bookbuzzr widget. Typically you would not search for a book because for example the book “Uncommon Sense”, I personally love that book, I love that poem called mantra and I would never have searched for that, I would never have gone out and said yeah I am gonna search for a book or for a verse called mantra, I would never have found it in the first list and I wouldn’t have search for it but I stumbled upon it and hopefully that’s the goal of bookbuzzr that people discover your work in places that they don’t expect maybe on a friends facebook profile, or someone’s blog or someone’s Myspace profile, to somebody’s tweet on LinkedIn or Reddit or digg hopefully they stumble upon your work and that’s really the goal.

Chad: I agree with you. You said that when the student is ready the teacher appears and. we are living in such a synchronistic society that is so digitally connected, so one click away from each other that it’s amazing. I have seen this it’s happen on Twitter all the time. You post something one of your original power in a moment and are countless other people either experiencing that same power right now or that same power applies directly to the allies in such a way that it is timely it is delivered to them and even with books obviously the information contained in them, bookbuzzr is another way for us to able to share this information real-time in synchronistically so that whenever the student is ready may be the teacher is a book and it could be right there at your finger tips.

Vikram: Exactly.

Chad: Hmm. I am curious but I see that it is always improving, I see that on a site and I see that you guys are always adding new things and can you gonna share me your secrets with this about what coming next?

Vikram: Right. Ok, so what coming next? One of the big features we have been working on is this notion called “Related Books”. So when somebody looks at a particular book ideally he is going to see other author’s book also at the end of his book so we are working on a feature called “Related Books”. The second thing we are working on his search engine Optimization. So that paragraphs from inside the book come up when somebody runs a search that’s the next big thing we are working on and we are also working on giving you the a badge. Let’s say Uncommon Sense has now more than two thousand full page views. People are reading it and its literally on fire that particular book and so we are gonna be showing up a little badge that says that this is the bookbuzzr Top Ten book and that badge is going to be there inside the widget itself so that’s the thing we are working on.

Chad: Love that and I love the idea of a related book with that mean anyone say if they are searching that they are reading another bookbuzzr book that say poetry then my book Uncommon sense will appear as related book because of poetry. Wow! Ok, excellent and I love the idea of the badge as well being able to, being able to see that. One thing I really like about bookbuzzr is that it gives these stats. You mean you don’t have to login or have an account, anything. Anyone can go to the website, they can click on it and they can actually see the number of views that the book is received. I like that as a publisher because authors always want to know where they are going to reach, they wanna know about the fact. the marketing and promotion it’s having and with allowing, with bookbuzzr allowing those stats to be viewed publicly it gives them that ability to see the results directly and I tell you whenever I post I have some friends on Twitter to listen and I appreciate them but when I post my books on, from bookbuzzr on to twitter it can receive anywhere from ten to twenty-five views immediately. I mean as soon as I press inner within the next minute you can go back to the bookbuzzr page and you can see in real-time how many people viewed that book because the way it is did and that’s to me is actually amazing it’s absolutely amazing.

Vikram: Right a real-time feedback.

Chad: And I did read about of course Google is integrating with Twitter so that real time tweets will be basically categorized by Google so then when searching, search something in real time anyone tweeting about that topic will come up on a Google search. Now let’s work the same way for books and will bookbuzzr books be listed on Google as well.

Vikram: Well, that’s something that’s not there right now and that something that saw you little farther down the our horizon but obviously coming up with a bookbuzzr widget when somebody runs a search here is a big thing that we have want in there. The other big thing that we are looking at and we shall haven’t got our arms around it as yet is Google wave so everyone is talking about Google wave, Google making a big push towards that, they opened up their API so that’s another area that we are studying I am seeing where or how we could value to authors through Google wave so that’s another thing.

Chad: That’s interesting from here. A lot’s and lots about the Google wave of course don’t, I don’t have an invite for yet folks so Google if you are listening send me an invite I would like to check out Google wave. It’s a, I am curious this from what I understand about Google wave it will allow users to share documents, photos, anything it’s on your system or computer with anyone else and not, I am not exactly sure how that works here but I like that idea because again as authors wanting to promote books, again now we have the ability to reach other one who is on Google and I understand that Google is turn a big aren’t they these days?

Vikram: Right. So they have the muscle power to push through a big idea and to their credit they are working on really some big ideas and it looks like Google wave is one of their big pushes out there, that’s something that if you are a developer you can’t not look at it right now and this is one of those things that you have to study and get into it.

Chad: Yeah and I heard this BookBuzzr is definitely has a strong Twitter presence you guys are you seem to have a staff or just several different folks that are on Twitter, they are active you have got about a wide helpline..

Vikram: Yeah we have got a staff really for providing Live Help so if someone needs help with their BookBuzzr upload process or host upload, marketing process we are avail out there typically we are there till about 11AM Eastern Standard so that will be about 8 Pm 8 Am pacific so that’s one thing but in terms of Twitter itself we have one person my colleague Freya who is on, her Twitter, handles book at BookBuzzr and she provides some information that’s valuable to authors and occasionally talks about very interesting BookBuzzr book so that’s basically our Twitter presence right now.

Chad: And I appreciate them being there because I have seen a lot of times when I post things about our books not just my own but any of Inner circles books from BookBuzzr. I notice that someone’s there from BookBuzzr usually backing it up and I again that’s impressive, for a free service you are sure offering a lot of, a lot of, of just a lot. You are offering a lot when considered this is absolutely free. I guess that’s it and the next question I have is, is there any talks or any ideas of there is being a charge for BookBuzzr.

Vikram: Well, that’s something that we are playing around with. Our own sense is that revenues will come in a way that we don’t expected to be. For example when Google launched if they had charged for search, search was is one of the most valuable functions out there and had Google made the mistake of charging for search they may not have been where they are today so we are big believers in the free economy anything that’s digital is rapidly rushing towards free and so at this point of time we don’t have a plans to directly charge for BookBuzzr we want to keep that free all the time forever but we are working on a couple of business models on the backend. one of those is advertising; the other is premium services for authors and again what that is? Is again that’s something that’s out there that we are researching. The Third is a sponsorship opportunity. Now one of the other big things that we are considering and it could work in the long run is allowing Ads to be shown inside of book and sharing those Ad revenues with authors so that’s something that out there may be a year or two down the road and that could be very powerful for a number of authors who would like to supplement their revenues. So many times when I buy a book it’s really is a memento for me; it’s a souvenir for me so I like the book, let’s say I like Uncommon Sense I want a copy not because of the quantum but because I have formed an emotional bond with, with that book or it’s part of the book so I want to have a physical copy. But I in this economy in this at the way the things are accelerating people won’t be able to quickly read everything, they want to get the information and if there is an emotional connect they want to go in for this souvenir. So at some point authors are gonna have to be able to share more and more of their works online while trying to figure out to the way to make money from other sources simply because that’s the way the market is moving. If you look at the book ‘Free’ from Chris Anderson the book was completely free for maybe a month or so and then people read it online. I personally downloaded the mp3 files which is again free and put up by the author and I listened to the entire book, I had been listening to it, the book became a NewYork’s time bestseller and and I am thinking of personally going out and purchasing a copy of that book because I have formed an emotional connect with that book I also think that there are parts of the book which I want to refer back to and the best way to do it is if I have it also as a copy. So figuring out ways where authors can make additional money is become the very important part for our business and we think that BookBuzzr is uniquely positioned for that simply because of the way the pages turn where when the page turns you wait till next page appears and figuring out a way to, of course in conjunction with authors and publishers and if they wanted offering a way for people to look at books almost for free is one big idea that we think is important we should be looking at so that where we are. In terms of cash flow itself I own another software company which does HR related software for hospitals, educational institutions and banks. So we have sufficient cash coming from that business as well as from other hassle investors who invested in BookBuzzr that we are ok for the next many years to actually experiment and play around and make sure that we have got enough adoption going before we turn on revenue models but we don’t want to turn on something and turn people off so that’s really where we are.


Chad: Yeah, yeah and I appreciate that. I like the, I like the idea of the not being as especially without the book itself. When people look inside the book now may be on the widget. Well, no not even on the widget you can also get because that would mean those ads would be running where that the widget is placed of without the ads but you mentioned something what about the ability to download books? I know a lot of people are starting to read books on their iphones and other applications is there any hope of BookBuzzr coming to a plan where people could download the full book even if they want to buy it through BookBuzzr and download the entire book.

Vikram: Yes definitely, so that’s another feature that we are working on called continue reading feature. So let’s say I have finished fifty pages of a particular book on BookBuzzr and I am tempted enough to continue reading there is going to be little link that says continue reading but the way we wanted to do that is it’s obviously something that we wanted to be very different from what’s out there. it could be a radio head model where people say pay what you want to pay for that and then continue reading. It could be a cost where if you make a decision in the next thirty seconds it’s going to be X price and in the next forty five seconds the price is going to change or it could be some other model but we are actually working on a number of
Features where the author can setup these things where the user is tempted into making a buying decision right there and then and again it’s our view of the world is that people will actually pay and often pay good money if they have the option of
Looking at their books on different devices so even though I may not be willing to pay for a book to read online and actually willing to pay money to listen to it on my ipod because that’s when I do most when I am listening so when I am driving I can listen to a book.

Chad: Ha Exactly.

Vikram: So the vision is that people will pay for devices and so building those integration points allow people to download through their iphones, kindles or palm pre’s is central to that. So that’s something again we are working on.

Chad: Exactly and I understand lot of people are they are interested in the PDF of books because they can load it in the applications such as I cannot recall the name of it now but it something we actually read a PDF to you. In any language you choose that’s actually very clever. In fact lot of people say hey I want this book but I don’t actually want the book, I want PDF of it. We told you that and I do understand what they were doing but at actually what they are doing is, they download the PDF, they put it into this reader and then when they are in the car, they are in the train and when they go they are actually listening to this book via this reader and that I think that’s impressive as well. Anything they get words in front of people. I am a firm believer that words are the foundation of that all, the beginning of that all and by hearing words, we can actually improve the effect and hopefully change the entire world. BookBuzzr excites me because this is the way book works in front of people. We are living in a time where it is difficult to compete with the media machine. Television, internet all these images and flash, neon and it just never stops. It’s an endless array and stream and people are moved more by words but it’s difficult for words alone are paged to compete with cable TV. I wanna congratulate BookBuzzr on making, making words more interesting to read and actually getting people opening books because with all the great things in the world it is the books that convey these ideas and I think that’s, that’s alternatively which is going to affect the world.
And now we are going, let’s check out time 5:47 at 14 minutes remaining. Callers are welcome 646-716-8138 we are live here to put the next about to twelve minutes about twelve minutes with the founder of BookBuzzr and a fReado and Vikram I wanna ask you about that. What is I understood that a fReado is a place where all the books are listed but BookBuzzr is a different site. What’s the purpose of that?

Vikram: Well, really BookBuzzr is for authors and at some point we think that readers don’t really to get exposed to the marketing side of things so readers don’t need to understand how do you market a book online? If I am a reader I just want to be able to come to a site and start reading a book. Whereas if I am an author I need to understand all of these dynamics how do I do while marketing, how do I tweet about this book? So BookBuzzr is really focussed on authors and so we decided to separate those two things out and fReado becomes a listing of books in Bookbuzzr format and their author profile and book profile so that the readers just enjoy the experience of reading so they don’t need to really get into what’s happening inside the under the herds.

Chad: Now actually that’s make sense especially when you are looking at I guess BookBuzzr will be considered more of backend for those participating in it and fReado will be the front end for people reading the books in it.

Vikram: Exactly.

Chad: Excellent, excellent. , I know that a lot of authors even today they are using YouTube as well. We use it quite a bit for ourselves for author interviews, promos for books and things of that nature. Are you guys using anything on YouTube to promote BookBuzzr now?

Vikram: Ah not really. Right now our biggest presence is on Twitter and we are hoping to blog and shows like this where authors get a word out. We haven’t looked at twitter I mean at Youtube. By the way Chad I really loved your little video which you put up on YouTube where you do the the rap its called sarcasm.

Chad: Sarcasm yeah. Thank You. Yes. Definitely so you obviously seen some of our YouTubes as well.

Vikram: It’s very compelling. A video is like a two minutes thing that you want to watch. and you could see it that’s pretty impressive.

Chad: Well again, that’s why we post not just us but any author that’s why you post on YouTube is to generate a buzz , a buzz about what you are doing, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a show anything that you wish to promote and YouTube has been a great source for that but I got to tell you even with YouTube we had almost 17,000 views to the fourteen videos we posted there. We are putting more up these kind of things but I still never seen anything that pictures. My book Uncommon sense has been up for years. It was it came on 2004 not the best seller in the entire world because amazingly and ironically it’s very difficult to sell poetry you just take it that. But since I am into BookBuzzr I have actually experienced book sales for a book of poetry and that is pretty outstanding because again I think when people open it and they see what it is? Well then they can decide for themselves whether or not they designate with the message that is conveyed and again even with YouTube, even with Twitter, even with all these things we have been using since we started this. I don’t ever think anything that actually works as well as BookBuzzr so I just, I wanna complement you on that and thank you for creating something.

Vikram: Thank you so much for BookBuzzr and using it, thank you so much.

Chad: It’s just absolutely amazing. Now I know we are rapping up to coming to bottom or top of the hour I guess either way you look at it. Any last words, any remaining words for authors out there who never heard a BookBuzzr but are looking for a way down to get more views to their book. Anything learning we must Vikram.

Vikram: Sure. So if you are an author there is so many other options out there and and they are competing for your time but we say that if you try BookBuzzr it will make big difference and helping you get started with your book marketing efforts. He would also be joining with a community of other authors with similar issues, similar challenges and and of course it’s free, so you really don’t lose anything except couple of minutes of your time to try out with our product. So that’s about it from our side Chad.

Chad: Excellent, I thank you so much for joining us all the way from India that is absolutely amazing. It’s great to be in contact with you and connected with your be it Twitter and all these other networks. One thing I would like to mention to you before we leave is if you ever interested in anyone to do any design work for the widget I would love to apply my friend, I would love to apply.

Vikram: Oh ok great! Yes. It’s something that I can test with it.

Chad: Excellent. Vikram thank you so much for joining us tonight show on our talk radio. This has been a live broadcast with another having got pain here in the world of not just books but really with communication, with technology. I mean we have seen technology advance faster than our means of communication my friend I got. I appreciate everything you are doing with BookBuzzr which allows people to not only share the things they communicate but encourages them to share with others and again I think the co-operation that’s also what’s making the web what it is and of course what can change it and you are just doing the amazing job with what you have created with BookBuzzr, so thank you so much for that and I does want to appreciate for a different Uncommon Sense because it’s seems like no one paid near as much attention before as they do now and I just

Vikram: It’s really good because it is really an uncommon book it is very different.

Chad: Oh thank you for that. I appreciate that. Ladies and gentleman Vikram pronounce your last name for me just one more time because I want to say right.

Vikram: Na Ra Yan. Narayan.

Chad: Narayan. Ah I can do that. I can do that. Ladies and gentleman Vikram Narayan namasthe sir.

Vikram: Namasthe.

Chad: Thank you for spending time with us

Vikram: Goodnight

Chad: Hi this is our talkradio Thursday special my edition. I know we are not usually live with this time but hey that’s live but it goes in the moment, it goes, it goes where next. I appreciate all of you in the chat enjoying us live, those of you on Twitter listening as well and we will be re tweeting the show. Thank you so much, appreciate listening and share the link we will see you next time.