Bookface
In late 1999/early 2000, and shortly after two of Anders' then-main journalistic subjects - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade - were cancelled, he was invited to fly from West Hollywood to San Francisco, to become Executive Editor of Bookface.com, an online company providing non-downloadable and non-printable books and short stories for free online reading.
In June 2000, Bookface, Inc. launched the (now defunct) website www.Bookface.com, a "Read on Demand" service precipitated both by the concurrent print on demand boom, and launching during the hype surrounding Stephen King's online-only novella The Plant, which had been launched in July, 1999. Bookface delivered "whole books and excerpts to readers directly", with publishers including HarperCollins, Penguin Puttnam, Random House and Time Warner Trade Publishing lined up to provide Bookface with content. CEO and co-Founder Tammy Deuster described Bookface as:
- "..essentially providing an ever-present and convenient way to find a book without a special hardware device, without a download, and without even requiring a credit card. A user simply logs on to our website and starts to read."
The idea behind Bookface.com was to provide books for free, "while paying authors and publishers for each page read", through revenue derived from advertising.
Unfortunately, Bookface's launch coincided with the bursting of the "dot-com bubble," while its success was tied closely to interest in online "Read on Demand" content (not to be confused with the similar but separate electronic medium, eBooks) becoming widespread. Arguably the highest-profile online-published title of the time was Stephen King's The Plant, whose initial success was cited by Bookface's co-founder and CEO Tammy Deuster as "proof that readers want to explore exciting books, whether those books are delivered in printed or electronic mediums." Despite initial success, however, actual sales of King's novella fell once the media circus had died down, with the ratio of paying readers to total readers falling to less than half by the fourth part of the serial. The Plant serialization came to a halt in late 2000, and Bookface itself followed suit, ceasing trading in early 2001.
In January 2001, Anders edited an anthology entitled Outside the Box: The Best Short Fiction from Bookface.com, which was published by Wildside Press.
Read more about this topic: Lou Anders