The BrainFood Model (article reprint)
Brass Tacks Publishing combines collaborative content creation with new technologies to serve readers
BTPi has long catered to business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs through seven, non-fiction print and audio imprints. Its new Patroned Publishing™ initiative takes advantage of the low production costs, collaborative content creation, virtual distribution networks, and zero inventories facilitated by digital technologies to offer e-books and audio books that can be affordably subsidized by Patrons and sponsors such as foundations, advertisers, and B2B corporate sponsors. The result is free publications that are globally-available to business practitioners, libraries, educators, students, veterans, and military personnel.
The Patroned feature of BTPi's business model is highly unique. In a tasteful, very limited manner, it adopts the revenue generating features of magazines and newspapers to print, digital and audio books without violating the integrity of traditional book content. Production and distribution costs of these Patroned books are offset by the inclusion of up to four discreet advertisements within each book. These terse “messages” from Patrons do not impinge upon the integrity of a book's principal content.
According to Paul Willax, the company’s Chairman, “The patronage model prevailed in the literary world prior to the nineteenth century – especially during the Renaissance – and was responsible for bringing the talents of writers like Shakespeare, Jonson, daVinici, Chaucer, Barbour, Wycliffe, and many others to new and larger audiences. Eventually, mass production techniques and increased consumer affluence allowed readers to personally purchase creative works in the marketplace.
Today, new technologies and market realities make it possible for publishers to provide the works of aspiring and accomplished authors to anyone in the world at no cost. This is the basis of our Patroned™ publishing model.”
While subsidizing the efforts of BTPi, Patrons also joy eaningful and easily-measured exposure to select clients and prospects.
BTPi's e-books, audio books, and tip sheets can be e-mailed or downloaded directly via the Internet in all of the most popular formats. These publications can be easily accessed through today's ubiquitous smart phones, tablets, e-book readers, digital audio listening devices, and traditional PCs. The publications are downloadable through popular web sites including those of Patrons and the publisher's web portal, BrainFoodToGo.com.
BTPi's titles are unique in the marketplace since they focus on pertinent topics of the day and, in most cases, are condensed to 60 pages or 60 minutes -- or less.
To ensure present-day relevance and to provide experienced, real-world know-how, BTPi solicits content contributions from experienced academicians, authors, students, consultants, coaches, bloggers, and professional experts. This collaborative approach emphasizes quality, scope, and variety. All content is screened by the Center for Business Ownership Inc. to ensure relevance and suitability.
In exchange for their contributions, content providers are afforded valuable exposure through prominently displayed attributions and embedded e-mail links and URLs. This affords them on-going opportunities to make important connections in the business community and to attract other publishers to their work. Since contributors' materials are used on a non-exclusive basis, writers maintain their copyright protections.
The publisher strives to foster ongoing collaborations between content providers and users in order to continuously generate publications that focus on contemporary, real-world needs and offer up-to-the-minute insights and information. Its proprietary publishing techniques greatly compress the time between the perception of new needs or trends in the marketplace and the availability of on-point books. These books can also eliminate the necessity for lengthy searches to extract relevant, topic-specific information from the thirty-billion web pages on the Internet. The company's BookSnacks, for example, are touted as "smaller than a book; better than a web page."
Most Brass Tacks publications offer another unique feature… they are perpetually updateable. Readers can request additional new information relative to a published topic as soon as it becomes available. This “everfresh” BrainFood is automatically forwarded to the readers, at no charge, via e-mail or internet postings.
With its novel business model, BTPi – a proudly-proclaimed “profit-free” company – provides readers with contemporary insights, relevant information, and inspiration; affords writers opportunities for both exposure and income; truncates the time between topic identification and publication availability; reduces costs to all participants; furnishes web authors and bloggers with wide, supplemental distribution for their posts and blogs; and makes optimum use of new technologies that enhance convenience and accessibility.
Readers are also encouraged to submit their own observations and information for publication, thus making Brass Tacks Publishing a truly collaborative venture that embraces a wide range of intellectual input.
To complement its digital publications, BTPi continues to produce and distribute traditional print books under its various imprints. These books can also be Patroned for free distribution through traditional trade book channels, the publisher's web site, and the marketing and customer networks of Patrons.
Most importantly, the BPTi approach to publishing facilitates the exchange of tacit, experiential know-how between “those who have learned the hard way” and “those who need practical help NOW.”
Brass Tacks Publishing Inc. is a division of Electromedia Technologies Corporation which has been providing print, audio, and video materials to the business community since 1963.
Brass Tacks Publishing combines collaborative content creation with new technologies to serve readers
BTPi has long catered to business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs through seven, non-fiction print and audio imprints. Its new Patroned Publishing™ initiative takes advantage of the low production costs, collaborative content creation, virtual distribution networks, and zero inventories facilitated by digital technologies to offer e-books and audio books that can be affordably subsidized by Patrons and sponsors such as foundations, advertisers, and B2B corporate sponsors. The result is free publications that are globally-available to business practitioners, libraries, educators, students, veterans, and military personnel.
The Patroned feature of BTPi's business model is highly unique. In a tasteful, very limited manner, it adopts the revenue generating features of magazines and newspapers to print, digital and audio books without violating the integrity of traditional book content. Production and distribution costs of these Patroned books are offset by the inclusion of up to four discreet advertisements within each book. These terse “messages” from Patrons do not impinge upon the integrity of a book's principal content.
According to Paul Willax, the company’s Chairman, “The patronage model prevailed in the literary world prior to the nineteenth century – especially during the Renaissance – and was responsible for bringing the talents of writers like Shakespeare, Jonson, daVinici, Chaucer, Barbour, Wycliffe, and many others to new and larger audiences. Eventually, mass production techniques and increased consumer affluence allowed readers to personally purchase creative works in the marketplace.
Today, new technologies and market realities make it possible for publishers to provide the works of aspiring and accomplished authors to anyone in the world at no cost. This is the basis of our Patroned™ publishing model.”
While subsidizing the efforts of BTPi, Patrons also joy eaningful and easily-measured exposure to select clients and prospects.
BTPi's e-books, audio books, and tip sheets can be e-mailed or downloaded directly via the Internet in all of the most popular formats. These publications can be easily accessed through today's ubiquitous smart phones, tablets, e-book readers, digital audio listening devices, and traditional PCs. The publications are downloadable through popular web sites including those of Patrons and the publisher's web portal, BrainFoodToGo.com.
BTPi's titles are unique in the marketplace since they focus on pertinent topics of the day and, in most cases, are condensed to 60 pages or 60 minutes -- or less.
To ensure present-day relevance and to provide experienced, real-world know-how, BTPi solicits content contributions from experienced academicians, authors, students, consultants, coaches, bloggers, and professional experts. This collaborative approach emphasizes quality, scope, and variety. All content is screened by the Center for Business Ownership Inc. to ensure relevance and suitability.
In exchange for their contributions, content providers are afforded valuable exposure through prominently displayed attributions and embedded e-mail links and URLs. This affords them on-going opportunities to make important connections in the business community and to attract other publishers to their work. Since contributors' materials are used on a non-exclusive basis, writers maintain their copyright protections.
The publisher strives to foster ongoing collaborations between content providers and users in order to continuously generate publications that focus on contemporary, real-world needs and offer up-to-the-minute insights and information. Its proprietary publishing techniques greatly compress the time between the perception of new needs or trends in the marketplace and the availability of on-point books. These books can also eliminate the necessity for lengthy searches to extract relevant, topic-specific information from the thirty-billion web pages on the Internet. The company's BookSnacks, for example, are touted as "smaller than a book; better than a web page."
Most Brass Tacks publications offer another unique feature… they are perpetually updateable. Readers can request additional new information relative to a published topic as soon as it becomes available. This “everfresh” BrainFood is automatically forwarded to the readers, at no charge, via e-mail or internet postings.
With its novel business model, BTPi – a proudly-proclaimed “profit-free” company – provides readers with contemporary insights, relevant information, and inspiration; affords writers opportunities for both exposure and income; truncates the time between topic identification and publication availability; reduces costs to all participants; furnishes web authors and bloggers with wide, supplemental distribution for their posts and blogs; and makes optimum use of new technologies that enhance convenience and accessibility.
Readers are also encouraged to submit their own observations and information for publication, thus making Brass Tacks Publishing a truly collaborative venture that embraces a wide range of intellectual input.
To complement its digital publications, BTPi continues to produce and distribute traditional print books under its various imprints. These books can also be Patroned for free distribution through traditional trade book channels, the publisher's web site, and the marketing and customer networks of Patrons.
Most importantly, the BPTi approach to publishing facilitates the exchange of tacit, experiential know-how between “those who have learned the hard way” and “those who need practical help NOW.”
Brass Tacks Publishing Inc. is a division of Electromedia Technologies Corporation which has been providing print, audio, and video materials to the business community since 1963.
