I Wrote an NFT Novel
And it’s now out in the world.
Last year, I got an email from Ismael Gómez García, an editor in Spain who had read a short story by me in a small literary magazine and asked me if I had other material to share, as he was launching a publishing house and was looking for unsung writers. Let’s skip for a moment the miraculousness of this event. I had written a novel a few years before that had had a couple of insufficiently enthusiastic agents. It had been collecting dust in a drawer. I promptly gave it a once over and sent it to Ismael, being cautious not to raise my hopes too much. A couple of weeks later I heard back from him: he loved it and wanted to publish it. My novel Quién te manda would finally see the light of day.
I liked Ismael’s on-demand publishing model, which was efficient and eco-friendly. Bea, my founding partner in DADA, one of the earliest platforms to tokenize art, suggested that we make this book into an NFT. The idea made perfect sense and I wish I had thought of it first. Still, I was not sure that Ismael was not going to react with alarm and ask, “what’s an NFT?”
To my good fortune, Ismael happens to be an ace in digital publishing and he didn’t think twice. He saw the potential to create a new, more dynamic, more inclusive, more flexible, more experimental, and more creative paradigm in literary publishing. In fact, we decided we wanted to publish the book as an NFT before getting it to print. We set out to research if other books had been tokenized. We found that there have been pdf files attached to a token, or fragmented, unlockable formats, but not really a book designed as an NFT.
So we decided to create one.
I reached out to my friend Moxarra, fellow Mexican, DADA artist, and world-renowned crypto artist, because of his amazing talent and because his cheeky, elegant style matches the style of the novel to a T.
We wanted a flashy animated cover that leads to a fun, interactive index, but then settles into a digital reading experience as close as possible to an actual book. Álvaro Recuenco created the design and user experience. When it was time to decide on which platform to publish it, we found few platforms which accepted files other than jpegs, or a lack of flexibility on the revenue splits. But we heard about The Platform, Sparrow’s publishing platform/DAO where artists can own their own contracts and eventually host their own storefronts, and we decided that this was the perfect home for our literary NFT project.
The NFT of Quién te manda is the debut publication that launches The Platform Beta. The Platform uses the Palm protocol, which is Ethereum-based, eco-friendly, and has negligible gas fees. In order to purchase the novel you have to swap your ETH to WETH and bridge your WETH to Palm. There are no secondary sales yet, so you will have to “hodl” the book until this functionality is added. So you can read it in peace.
We launched this book in its original Spanish because it was important for us to show that innovation is not only anglo-centric. I am proud that a novel in Spanish and a Mexican novel is a pioneer in the field of NFT publishing.
An English version is in the wings, translated by me, with a different companion cover by Moxarra.
I am so happy that this moment has finally arrived and that people are collecting and enjoying the NFT of Quién te manda.
The private presale ends September 22 at 3 pm EST and after that, the general sale opens to the public. Visit The Platform to collect the NFT book.
Please join our Discord for more info, fun, and tech support.
If you still love to hold a paper book in your hands, here are the links where you can find it. The NFT of the novel will be available on The Platform for everyone to read.
Enjoy!
