Type Private Founded 2008 Products Books | Genre Publishing Headquarters United Kingdom | |
Founder Oliver Brooks; Anna Lewis | ||
CompletelyNovel is a British website which allows authors to self-publish their work into a reading and writing online community. Based in the United Kingdom, the company was founded in 2008 by Oliver Brooks and Anna Lewis, the site encourages writers to make their work available for people to read in order that they can gain feedback and promote their work. CompletelyNovel has been compared to other writer websites such as Authonomy which offers writers the chance to get their book published by major publishers by getting good reviews from other users; Lulu.com, which offers similar self-publishing services; and Shelfari, which has a book-based online community.
Contents
CompletelyNovel's co-founder Oliver Brooks reached the London final of The Pitch, a competition to find the UK's best small businesses and co-founder Anna Lewis was shortlisted for the UK Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award 2010, run by the British Council.
Overview
CompletelyNovel links the books uploaded by writers to print-on-demand printers Antony Rowe and Lightning Source to enable readers to buy paperback copies of the books from the CompletelyNovel website. Readers can read the uploaded books online using CompletelyNovel's BookStreamer – an embeddable online reader. CompletelyNovel offers publishing packages for authors who would like to make their books available to buy through book retailers such as Amazon.com.
Readers on CompletelyNovel can create an online library of both traditionally published books and the self-published books on the website, adding reviews, ratings and tags to these books.
Projects
CompletelyNovel is also involved in a number of cross industry projects to promote digital innovation in publishing. The company partnered with a number of mainstream publishers and hosted the book publishing industry's first Author Blog Awards. There were over 500 author blogs nominated. The winners of the Author Blog Awards 2010 as voted for by the public included author Neil Gaiman, Emily Benet (a debut author published by Salt Publishing) and Sam Starbuck, a self-published writer.
The 24hr Book Project was also created and managed by CompletelyNovel along with book industry 'think and do tank' if:book, the Society of Young Publishers and Spread The Word, a London-based writer development agency. A team of writers, directed by novelist Kate Pullinger, editors and artists collaborated using Google Docs, Twitter, a ning platform and Skype to produce a book in 24 hours. Members of the public were invited to join in via Twitter and a public Google Doc. The final book was titled 'A Vauxhall Chorus' and was launched at a members' club in Soho.
Licensing
As with Lulu.com, authors retain all rights to uploaded work. Authors retain copyright, and although uploading a work to CompletelyNovel grants the company a non-exclusive license to display and sell the work, the author retains the right to remove the work at any time.