Equus Information Services, Part 2

**Picking up from yesterday**

4. DRM

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and what it means is that the media we publish is not only completely secure and copy-protected, but that it makes it very valuable to actually encourage your customers to send the file to as many people as they like.

Because we're developing these products in a proprietary format (i.e. it's not just PDFs, mp3s, etc), I can choose to allow or disable copy and paste functions, printing, and drag-and-drop on as much or as little of the product as I want. Furthermore (this is the cool part), I can embed a payment gateway right into the digital product itself. That means that if I was publishing your collection of poetry, for example, we could leave the first 2 of 20 peoms openly readable, and then create a payment wizard that pops up when someone tries to turn the page to the third one. If they don't want to pay for it, no big deal, but that's all they'll be able to see. If they want to buy the rest, they enter their credit card info (or paypal, or bank account) right there, and it unlocks the rest of the book for them on the spot.

So if they like it, they can send the file to 50 friends, and each of their friends (because they view the file on a new computer) would have the same option to pay to unlock the whole thing. An entire marketing campaign can be designed around giving your audience incentives to send the product to their friends and family, which leads me to my last point...

5. Viral Marketing

The marketing strategy I'm developing begins with getting just 100 people to buy a product, with strong incentives to send it to 10 people they think might be interested (or to send 10 people a link to the website). 100x10x10x10.....you can see where this is going. Viral, community based marketing is explosive and exponential, plain and simple, as long as you can keep your product both appealing and inobtrusive (i.e. not annoying or invasive in any way). You actually develop goodwill and a stronger sense of community/participation as you get your product in front of more people.

So, why don't more people publish digitally, if it's so great?

Well the answer is the reason I'm creating Equus in the first place. Namely, most of the digital material on the web right now is crap. Most of it is poorly designed by people with no skills or interest in graphics, layout, etc. A lot of it is actually factually inaccurate, or at least pretty pointless. It's often a total crap-shoot, which is why people are still a little leary of the idea of digital material (calling something an "e-book" does not carry very possitive connotations these days).

Equus intends to help address that by developing a strong brand recognition for quality, accessibility, and accuracy. Basically, if it's published by Equus, you'll be able to expect a certain standard of excellence. The file will work, the content will be quality, and the design will be professional.

Beyond just the quality standard, however, I really want Equus to become associated with a certain way of thinking. Do you love to learn? Are you interested in a lot of random topics? Do you like to be stretched creatively, artistically, and intellectually? Are you always looking for opportunities to discover new ideas?

Yeah? Then you'll love Equus. Start by finding some things that interest you - a new album of Sitaar/rock fusion, a short documentary on relief efforts in Somalia, or a volume of creative photography (these are all actual things I've been thinking of publishing. If you happen to recognize something you're working on in that list...we need to talk ;-) ). From there, you'll be introduced to other interesting projects and material that you never would have known to look for, based on your interest. That's the long term vision, anyway...



So that's the (longer than I expected) breakdown of what I've been spending the majority of my time developing over the past 8 months. I know there's a lot of text to wade through (compared to my normal posts at least), but if you guys have any thoughts, ideas, questions, or suggestions, I would LOVE to hear them. Seriously, I would find it very very helpful.

And since I know there are a greater than average number of creative/artistic types out there, be thinking about Equus as a way to publish material. The format is ideal for smaller, bit-sized content, so you don't need to have written an 800 page opus, or completed your epic rockopra symphony yet. If you have something you've always wanted to create, though, maybe this would be a good time to take a look at it again. Just something to think about ;-)