Update 5/20/2012: We’ve enabled payment acceptance, so you can now price and sell your books!

We know you’re asking yourself, why should I be publishing with these guys? What’s in it for me?

We also know there are risks and uncertainties involved in trying something new. We believe in our product, and we want you to also. We want to make the Kbuuk experience the best publishing experience out there. To simplify your decision-making process and reduce your feelings of cognitive dissonance, we’ve outlined the benefits of becoming a beta author and we’ll expound a little on each to tell you why it’s such a good thing.

Let’s go through the writing and publishing process really quickly for a second. Not to downplay the grueling work involved in putting together a manuscript, but I’m going to synthesize it down to one sentence. You spend an exorbitant amount of time agonizing over every detail until finally one day it all comes together, and you’re ready to let good enough alone, because let’s face it, there’s always something you could change or add in the quest for perfection.

Now that you have a manuscript, or at minimum, part of a manuscript, and assuming you haven’t published before, and you intended to go the legacy publishing route, now it’s time to shop your work around. You send your work out to every publishing contact you can get your hands on then you hold your breath and cross your fingers that this shotgun approach is going to pan out. And you wait, and wait, and wait some more.

Let’s say someone actually looks at your work and reads it. Now you’re at the mercy of the decision of one or two people who will decide the fate of all of your hard work and strife. And, keep in mind that independent of content, they are looking out for the works that will add the most to their bottom line and cover all of the overhead. And how often does really good stuff fall through the cracks? There are countless stories of manuscripts that have been rejected numerous times before someone saw the value in the work, but here’s the real catch, it’s always the readers who decide the fate of a work, not the publishers. Publishers are only along for the ride, and are as profitable as the authors that they bring on as judged by the audience. Sound a little backwards and outdated? We thought so too.

So this is what we’re offering for our beta authors, and please know that we’re capping these benefits at the first 1000 people who create accounts, so get on it!:

90% Royalty rates for the lifetime of your book. But that’s unheard of! Yes, we know. It’s a risk for us too because we know that all of our authors have the potential to be the next Patterson, Roberts, or Larson, even better, the next Amanda Hocking or John Lock, but we’re in this together. If you scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours. Keep in mind, we’re also new, and in order to gain credibility, we need authors. We have every confidence that if we bring on great authors and get them to use our suite of tools, the readers will follow. And how do you attract great authors? With a 90% royalty carrot, of course.

There is a condition attached to this benefit. Our payment acceptance functionality isn’t quite yet functional. We’re getting there, so you have to take a risk and come along for the ride. So for now, you’ll be distributing for free, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think of this as your opportunity to get it out to your close network for feedback, and then once we can accept payment, all systems go!

Exclusive webcasts with the development team. Right now we’re still refining and developing the software. If you jump on board now, consider yourself and innovator in the product adoption curve. You will have exclusive feedback opportunities to make suggestions and to create something you want to use with the features most important to you. You’ll also be first to know when new features are scheduled for release. Consider yourself a Kbuuk insider at this point.

Your work featured. Marketing a work is one of the biggest challenges in writing a book. Not only is it really, really difficult to get a work completed, but now you have to worry about communicating its existence and convincing people it’s worth their time. More hard work and hustle are involved. For our beta authors, we will be offering 72 hours of premium Featured Book space in our bookstore to help you promote. So when someone visits the site or the iPad app (coming soon!) they will see your work first.

Free ISBN. We’ll keep this one short and simple. One single ISBN is $125.00. ‘Nuff said.

We’re open to your suggestions. Feel free to leave comments below on what you would like to see as an author or email us at support@kbuuk.com. We’re willing to go the extra mile to show our appreciation and gratitude for giving us a try. If you’re ready to try us out now, link on through to the Register page and sign up now!