"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision.  As long as we have books, we are not alone."  -Laura Bush

LoreBooks provides short story and fan-fiction writers the ability to turn their stories into realistic, interactive 3D e-books.   Our goal is to allow these books can be embedded on third-party websites through the use of plugins, similar to YouTube videos, so that small communities can utilize this technology without the readers having to leave their home website.  We plan to bring short story and fan-fiction writing into the 21st century, providing our users the experience they deserve.

Writers are paid through advertisements embedded with the book, allowing the money to be utilized in 3 different ways.  The first option is for the money to be used to purchase upgrades such as hiring a professional developer to help create a book cover, or having an editor look over your work to make corrections.  These tools are great for new writers who want help building a reputation on the website and improving their reader base.  The second option is for more established writers who have a reputation, and are currently or recently attended college.  For every 1 million book reads, writers will be awarded $1000 in scholarship money that can be used to help pay off student debt.  Finally, if you don’t have any student debt or wish to build your resume instead, money earned through LoreBooks can be given to one of many charities we’ll be supporting.  Every year, a financial transcript will be provided to any user who donated over $1000 to a single organization, allowing them to get tax deductions and update their resume for supporting a cause.  LoreBooks will also match a percentage of this donation based directly on that organization’s Charity Navigator score, encouraging our users to donate to credible and responsible organizations.

Over the next few months, we’ll be researching different ways to monetize LoreBooks such as ads and subscriptions, but there are some core ideals we’ve decided upon.  Our most important guideline is that this service will be absolutely free to use, for both readers and writers, with no mandatory monthly subscriptions fees.  In the future, LoreBooks may offer additional features or tools that require subscriptions, but the core of our service will remain free.  Our second guideline is based around the concept of “minimally invasive advertising,” or only using advertisements that don’t interfere with the user experience of LoreBooks.  This means no popups, no ads directly inside the books, no “Click here to continue” pages, and certainly no video or sound ads.  We’ll be listening very closely to your feedback as we continue development, making sure that we respect our users’ right to immersion and a quality experience.

LoreBooks has many plans to increase the quality and extent of our service, which includes (but is not limited to);
Compatibility with mobile devices, as well as third party embedding
The graphical customization of book covers, textures, images, and account profiles
Forums designed to help writers build their stories and connect with new users
New models relevant to different story genres (high-tech books for SciFi stories, etc)
Page interactivity for Tables of Contents, or enabling external links for guides
Character libraries to create realistic digital bookshelves of your favorite stories
Increased services that include certifications or classes to improve your writing skills
A professional writing system, where the users write the front page articles and editorials
And, most importantly, new features based directly on testing feedback

Once you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll be asked to take a survey and decide if you’d like to sign up for future testing.  It’s extremely important that you be truthful in your feedback.  Don’t try to flatter us, we need honest feedback to help prioritize development and increase the quality of our service.  Early on in testing, only a handful of people may be admitted to prevent our systems from crashing, but we promise that everyone will have a chance.  The more information that you provide to us during this test, the higher your chances of being selected as an early tester.  Eventually, the information from your Alpha application will be used to create your user account.

Once we’re satisfied with the stability of our service and testing, we’ll move from Alpha to closed Beta, launching a Kickstarter campaign to increase our tester base and begin to raise publicity and funding to expand our services.  By this time all Alpha testers will have had a chance to test and make their accounts, while new Beta testers will be able to join as they donate to the Kickstarter.  Alpha testers may also donate, as this money will be directly credited to your account to purchase web features / scholarships / charity donations.

As LoreBooks develops into a full service, things may get a little bumpy.  Sometimes we may make modifications that cause our services to do some things that are unexpected, or crash, or generate a malicious computer AI that tries to enslave humanity.  Sometimes these things will be intentional to gather data (probably not the enslaving humanity part though), but usually it’s the result of developing a new technology that needs to interact with hundreds of different computers, operating systems, devices and websites.  What’s important to remember is that LoreBooks is being developed for you (the user), not for investors or profit, but to finally give readers and writers the quality experience you’ve been waiting for, and the experience you deserve.