NFTs of digital publishing industry will be a game changer
Blockchain NFTs on your mind? Definitely, a buzzword in your news feeds at least? Non-fungible tokens (shortened “NFT”) are a worldwide phenomenon gaining momentum across creative industries. Yet most people do not understand the technology. London based author and bestseller, Dr. Mandeep Rai does.
Dr. Rai believes blockchain technology and NFTs offer new avenues for authors, publishers, and readers to engage and interact. She believes the opportunities for the digital publishing industry with NFTs for books could be game changing. Exploring the opportunity she is collaborating with Dubai based DECA4 Advisory, a blockchain consultancy to launch unique content and engagement experiences for her international bestseller, The Values Compass.
Dr. Rai explains her objective, “We live in a world where information is changing constantly and we need to keep updating our ideas and the way we engage with them. Equally, different readers have their own application from the high-level ideas a book conveys. Combining NFTs for books will give authors’ the potential to creatively engage with that wider audience.”
Blockchain technology and NFTs solve some practical problems in the book publishing industry as well. “An NFT is a digital asset that represents a unique real-world object, more specifically it represents an individual’s ownership of the unique item,” explains Mohammed Mahfoudh, CEO of DECA4 Advisory. “With NFTs, you don’t just own a copy of an e-book, you own a specific copy of it within the timeline, journey, and development of it. Imagine you could create a book that has specific artwork and diagrams, examples and case studies, or worksheets depending on the audience’s industry. That is something that is very valuable for everyone in the ecosystem – reader, author, and publisher – and is made practically easy to develop, publish, and maintain through blockchain and NFT technologies.” NFTs and the underlying blockchain technology makes books harder to pirate, and more difficult to infringe an author’s copyright. Smart-contracts make it faster and easier to automate contractual payments, essential as we look at more complex ways of engaging with the audience.
As an initial project, the combined team of Dr. Rai and DECA4 Advisory will be launching NFTs based off Dr. Rai’s book The Values Compass. This bespoke process which captures each readers’ unique core values, can be captured in an NFT. Tokenization is part of an exciting new ecosystem being built, a world in which individuals connect directly to communities and content providers based upon their values, offering new ways to exchange value. Moreover, The Values Compass is right to be a trailblazer in this space, as one’s NFT portfolio and the associated communities will ultimately be a reflection of one’s individual values. The team plans to expand the project further with unique engagement avenues for readers and deeper experiences based off the ideas in the book.
Dr. Mandeep Rai is a global authority on values, working with companies, institutions, and individuals around the world. She has traveled to more than 150 countries and reported as a broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service, CNN, and Forbes, among others. She began her career in private banking at JPMorgan, and later worked for the United Nations, the European Commission, and grassroots NGOs before setting up the UAE's first media venture capital fund. Mandeep studied philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE), has an MSc in development from the London School of Economics, and completed an MBA at London Business School, with a year at Harvard Business School and MIT. She also holds a PhD in global values.
In The Values Compass, Dr. Mandeep Rai shows how the countries of the world epitomize the power of values. It provides an ideal guide to help us understand our own and teaches us important lessons about success. The book shows how we can incorporate the values that animate nations into our own lives, seeing ourselves through the eyes of the world, and shedding new light on the opportunities and challenges that define us. The result is an insightful and readable collection that helps us reflect on the values that matter most, last longest, and have the greatest power to create change.
