Site That Helped Launch The Literary Web Turns To Kickstarter
March 7, 2012
If you're familiar with the thriving literary blogosphere, you probably already know about Ron Hogan. Hogan is the founder of the pioneering literary website Beatrice.com, which started out as a site for in-depth interviews with writers, both world-renowned and up-and-coming. Now it's better known as a general literary blog, regularly updated with brief posts about books. But Hogan hopes to return to his site's more ambitious beginnings and be able to hold intelligent conversations again with authors of note. He plans to do this by coming out with an app version of Beatrice, at the foreground of which are his author interviews.
He also wants the app to be released for free. This is why he has started a Kickstarter campaign to attract funding for the app's development. Hogan intends for the initial app release to contain at least three interviews viewable and readable free of charge, but after the inaugural "issue" new interviews will be pushed to the app in bundles of three or four and will be available as in-app purchases costing either $1.99 or $2.99.
With only 19 days to go before the campaign expires, nearly half of the $4,500 project goal has been pledged by over 50 backers. Depending on the amount pledged, incentives for backers include ad space on Beatrice.com, which has a global Alexa traffic rank of approximately 1.5 million, and DRM-free e-books featuring interviews with contemporary authors, such as Jennifer Weiner, George Saunders, Elizabeth Gilbert and Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket.
If Kickstarter comes through and the initial development gets greenlit, Hogan will be taking the stage during BookExpo America in early June this year to launch the Beatrice app. If you enjoy reading books and listening to the people who write them, why not help Beatrice find her way to the App Store?
