Crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call.
Jeff Howe, Jun 2006
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Coffee Table Books

PsychSplash
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  • Submitted by: PsychSplash
  • Created: Sep 5, 2006, 3:42 am
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The Idea

Crowd sourced coffee table books. coffeetablebooks.com.au does self-made coffee table books. It strikes me this is a great market for crowdsourcing. Build the book template, select the theme, post the template on the web. Take entries for a selected period of time (e.g., 1 month). Display entries and utilize warz system to pick those for the book. Allows for a quick turnover. Team with someone like Lulu.com and deliver book through Prezzle. A great way to combine some of the best elements of CH, namely crowdsourcing, idea warz, user contributions, existing programs (e.g., prezzle).

I thought of this idea when I was...

thinking about Kramer's coffee table book about coffee tables as well as the enormous number of digital photos and possible topics.


Comments Posted

motiggidy
motiggidy Posted: September 5, 2006, 2:06 pm

How about a toilet reading book about weird/unique toilets and bathrooms. Not sure it could also serve as a toilet though, LOL.

PsychSplash
PsychSplash Posted: September 5, 2006, 6:50 pm

Hi Motiggidy - toilet reading book is awesome idea.

vsedach
vsedach Posted: September 8, 2006, 2:22 pm

CGTalk used to do something like this and has now spun it off into a separate business. However, 1. They had a prepared market (most of the books sold out on preorders, and the first few book printings were financed on them), 2. They had extremely high quality input artwork, 3. They utilized extremely high quality printing technologies, and the books were priced accordingly. I think the idea proposed by PsychSplash can work, but the focus is going to have to be on memes - book publishing is still very much an economies-of-scale business. You can probably use "crowdsourced pre-order pledge count" (basically something like a low-cost, refundable option) as a decision criteria for putting together and printing a particular book.

 

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