BookBrewer Wins CrowdPitch Award

More good news from BookBrewer. Last night I was invited to present the concept and business model at a Denver event called CrowdPitch run by Funding Universe. Five companies were selected to give 4-minute presentations to a crowd of about 50 people, plus a panel of finance/investor types.

At the end of the pitches, attendees got to dole out Monopoly money to the companies they liked most. And they chose … BookBrewer!

We were totally surprised by this, as some of the other companies, like Sand-Off, had great businesses. We take it as yet another sign that average people identify with the concept of self-publishing eBooks.

Thanks to Edward Reynolds and Shane Van Cott for running such a fun, informative event. My only regret? I couldn’t take the monopoly money home to give to my kids.

BookBrewer Training Video

As BookBrewer gets closer to its public launch, we’re adding video tutorials that can be viewed within the tools. Here’s the first one. It shows how to use the Build Your Book page to add chapters, text and photos, and organize them in a table of contents, and then how to preview your eBook.

BookBrewer Help: Building Your Book from Dan Pacheco on Vimeo.

Thanks to Kit Seeborg and our friends at Bumpertunes.com for the background music.

The Insolent Guide to Northern Colorado Mountains

Here’s BookBrewer’s fourth BookBrewer Charter Author: Mark Scott-Nash. He describes himself as “a mountaineer, runner, mountain biker, traveler, writer, rescuer, inventor, EMT, philosopher, amateur pop psychologist, funny guy, dirtbag and scalawag practicing hooliganism.”

Mark’s book is called The Insolent Guide to Northern Colorado Mountains. You can buy it on Amazon.com for the Kindle and Kindle apps, and soon also on Borders.com.

In Mark’s own words, this hiking book is “not simply a book of directions, but also a compilation of essays expressing why we are addicted to the primordial mountain wilderness experience. Containing something for everyone, whether you are a beginner or extreme athlete, this is your guide to year-round adventure!”

What else do we like about this book? It’s the perfect type of reference content to literally have in your pocket. We at BookBrewer live and work out of the Boulder area and ofen find ourselves driving through a beautiful part of the state of Colorado wondering, “Are there any good hikes around here?” Now we can pull out our Kindle app on the iPhone and bring up Mark’s book. It’s also searchable (“Where was that hike with the waterfall? Tap, tap, tap … there it is …”) and you can add your own notes (“Head right at mile 2 for a great view!”).

BookBrewer’s First 3 Charter Authors Publish eBooks

These authors have been working on their eBooks in the BookBrewer system for the last few weeks (but really, months and years of writing before that). Last night they clicked the Publish button, and BookBrewer sent their books into the Amazon.com store.

We’re really proud of what they’ve accomplished, and we think you will be too. Do them a favor and download sample copies of their eBooks, then buy the full versions if you want to read more. Because they’re our first authors, they will make 100% of the post-retailer proceeds. If you don’t have an Amazon Kindle, you can also use the following programs and apps:

• Amazon Kindle for PC
• Amazon Kindle iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

Without further adieu, here are links to the books:

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State of Emergency by Nate Braden is an historical drama about a failed coup attempt on FDR: http://amzn.to/aAcLp6

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Bryte’s Ascent by E. Rose Sabin is the 4th fantasy novel in a series (previously all print): http://amzn.to/cwWRaf

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The Dating Dad by Eric Elkins (http://twitter.com/datingdad) is a best-of rollup of 6 years of blog posts: http://amzn.to/ahYCXD.

Thanks also to FeedBrewer’s designer Don Hajicek for creating such appealing book covers for State of Emergency and The Dating Dad. We plan to offer more book design in the future, with Don one of several designers you can choose from. And thanks also to our CTO Andy Lasda, who created the interface and code that makes BookBrewer work.

Next step: publishing into Borders.com. Stay tuned!