i had 6 stories on powerpoint and thought no more of it. However I had applied for a job at the internet auction house ebay. It was for music, movies and books category manager. I thought I had a good chance because I'd worked on the commercial side of the NME, Melody Maker, Uncut, Loaded and most recently I'd sold all the movie, music and book ads in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. I still work for Associated Newspapers but I work across over 100 websites selling adverts - the internet is the future you know!!
Anyway, I knew that I was a good candidate for the job, but I wanted to come up with something special for the interview. Music and DVD are big categories on ebay and the site is really well suited to selling them, but the auction structure doesn't lend itself well to the selling of books (you really need a huge inventory available all the time) I thought you could beef up the books category on ebay if you gave it a real point of difference.
My idea was to set ebay up as a place for people who write as well as read. Budding authors could sell their books as word documents, with the first chapter posted in lieu of an item description. Customers would read the first chapter, and if interested could bid to get a disc with the file on it. Then they could leave feedback (positive, neutral etc) like it was a mini review. In time, the good writers would get large positive feedback scores and they could make the decision to use their success either to get a publishing deal or just continue selling on ebay (even as a properly published author you only get about a quid a book anyway - more of which later)
good idea in principle, but all talk. I wasn't prepared to write a novel to prove my point (although I do have the first 10,000 words of a novel i've been writing for about 7 years!) but I did have the kitten stories so I came up with an attractive package (pictured) to sell on ebay.
No comments:
Post a Comment