IQ Interactive Special Report: Shock Troops / E-content

Chris MacAskill flies high with a new e-publishing enterprise. MightyWords CEO Chris MacAskill is not a man to rest on his laurels. In 1999, four years after establishing the successful online computer bookstore Fatbrain.com, MacAskill founded MightyWords, now a major e-publishing site on the Net. It all began in time-honored Silicon Valley fashion when MacAskill and partner Kim Orumchian co-founded a computer bookstore in MacAskill's garage in 1995. The company swiftly became successful, acquiring Computer Literacy Bookshops in 1997 and changing its name to Fatbrain.com in 1999. Then came MightyWords, originally a division of Fatbrain that spun off as a separate company this July. Gesturing expansively and changing positions about 58 times in a chair in his modest office, MacAskill burns even brighter when he discusses the two Santa Clara, Calif.-based businesses he has created. "When Kim and I were just starting the bookstore in 1995, we intended to sell general interest books," MacAskill says. "But when we checked out the action at Barnes & Noble and saw patrons buying just one inexpensive paperback at a time, we got scared. We decided to sell computer books instead." For one thing, computer books are generally more expensive, running around $40 for a single book. Also, MacAskill says, "people tend to buy more than one at a time." The other reason was MacAskill's observation that "companies are publishers. They put out books about their products all the time. For example, Sun puts out well-written, attractive books. If you wanted to buy a Sun server, you would want both a book by Sun itself to give you the inside scoop and one by a third party to point out glitches. People used to have to scrounge around in different places to find these books; we made it possible for folks to obtain them in one place." Currently, Fatbrain manages, markets and distributes books and information for more than 350 companies, including IBM, Cisco, Apple and Sun. Because Fatbrain deals in this specialty niche, "we have products Barnes & Noble and Amazon don't have," MacAskill claims. A similar insight into a specialized market was the inspiration for MightyWords. "People will pay to read newspaper and magazine articles, which are usually around three pages. On the other end, they will gladly pay for a book, which I'm defining as anything more than 100 pages." Because of traditional publishing restrictions, previously there were no established channels to purchase works of an intermediate length, however. In MacAskill's eyes, "The Internet enables the deep uncharted cavern in between." This is why the MightyWords model is "longer than a magazine article, shorter than a book." This description leaves room for a wide variety of material: speeches, research reports, short stories and essays. Writers who want to sell their material submit it electronically to the company, which then posts the listing in the appropriate categories, which include computing, Internet, mystery, parenting, humor and sports. MightyWords customers download the content in PDF format and print it out. The target length is between 10 and 100 pages, though this is not mandatory. MacAskill says, "People won't print out stuff longer than 100 pages. They're afraid if they do, their coworkers will be there glaring at them, 'Printer hog! You held up my job! You tree-killer!' " MightyWords' revenue stream has two components--a partnership with Barnesandnoble.com and the income from the works published on the site. The authors split their earnings 50-50 with MightyWords. The Barnesandnoble.com partnership, announced in June, involved a $20 million investment from the online bookstore. The money is targeted toward MightyWords' efforts to land big-ticket authors, among other things. As part of the deal, Barnesandnoble.com displays MightyWords content on its site. MacAskill says his site's biggest source of material is publishers, although many authors approach MightyWords independently. According to MacAskill, the site's influence on e-publishing became clear when Stephen King decided to publish an Internet-only book "inspired by MightyWords." "Arthur C. Clarke [author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many other science fiction titles] published a five-page speech on our site. Stephen King read about this and when he checked out our site he was inspired to sell Riding the Bullet online." The author reportedly sold more than 500,000 copies of the 66-page short story in one week. The CEO's enthusiasm makes it easy to see why MacAskill decided to try for the brass ring one more time. As he puts it, "It's what I'm passionate about."--Janis Mara

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IQ Interactive Special Report: Shock Troops / E-content - Mighty Man

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