Introducing nBooks: NFT based eBooks

Nalnda
3 min readMar 25, 2022

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courtesy: Casual life 3D by Icons 8

Question: Why is there a market for second-hand physical books but not for second-hand eBooks?

The answer is ownership. Readers are the owners of physical books and thus are free to resell them. However, with eBooks, readers don't have ownership of them. In fact, the ownership of eBooks is with the Reader platform which charges hefty fees by selling them to the readers and offering pseudo- ownership to the readers. With this pseudo-ownership, readers can only read their eBooks but can't sell them to anyone. And this is where nBook comes into the picture.

nBooks are NFT based ebooks that impart an important property to the eBooks that had been missing so far: ownership. The NFT allows the transfer of ownership from one reader to another. Using NFT different types of eBooks can be minted based on features.

Type- There could be multiple types of copies of any title based on its cover design, the color of pages, graphics, and information on trivia.

No. of copies -Authors/publishers can set a number on how many copies a title will have. A basis feature will allow nBook to have an unlimited number of copies. A new copy will be minted every time someone buys the title. If required a title can have two variants with one having limited no. of copies (just like limited edition) and the other will unlimited no. as mass edition

Decay factor — Decay factor will be assigned to every copy of a used nBook. Authors will have the right to decide which type of nBook will have what decay factor

nBooks is the core of Nalnda's business model. To convert eBooks into nBook we use NFT 2.0 technology. The NFT 2.0 technology will use one NFT exclusively to access another NFT using public-private key encryption.

An overview of how Nalnda will do it:

the eBook will have two parts:

a. Content — The part that readers will reader

b. Book Cover — The part that readers will buy to access the content. Readers will be able to resell the cover just like any other NFTs. The new owner of the NFT will have access to the content while the previous owner will lose ownership of the content after selling it. Content and Book Cover will have a one-to-many relation

Content and Cover will have a one-to-many relationship

Content stored on decentralized storage can be accessed publicly using the CID ( Content Identifier). To make the content private and only accessible to the owner, the contract address of book cover NFT will be embedded in content NFT. This will only allow the owner of Cover NFT to access the content.

Feel free to share your queries regarding our implementation of NFT2.0 technology to NFT based eBooks.

About Nalnda

Nalnda is a decentralized marketplace for NFT based eBooks that allow readers to more than just read them and authors/publishers to have multiple revenue streams and earn a royalty on every secondhand book sale.

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Nalnda

Nalnda is the first decentralized marketplace for NFT based eBooks