I want to be open about a challenge I face in my role as an outside blogger for Exbiblio. I believe it reflects a common situation at start-up businesses. Let’s call it “The Founder Question.”

The founder of Exbiblio is a man of very strong character and vision called Martin King. He knows that the time will come for him to bow out of his leadership role. As it happens, in his case he is far more acutely aware of this eventuality than most – but that’s an important story for another time.

Martin has asked me to minimise mentions of him in this blog and to “depersonalise” where possible. This is understandable. He wants Exbiblio’s values and culture to become so deeply rooted that they last for long after he has stepped back from the company. To quote an influentual book, “Built to Last”, a “visionary company” is far more enduring and has more impact that a “visionary leader”.

But the story of a start-up without the founder is a bit like Hamlet without the ghost (or even without Hamlet). The plot would not make sense. Inevitably, this blog will have to cast him in a central role, although I will try to meet his concern where possible.

“The Founder Question” has many aspects, and is surely one that almost every start-up has to come to terms with and solve. It all boils down to knowing when to let go. It’s an interesting topic to which we shall be returning.

People ask me all the time if books will ever become obsolete. I don’t think so. There is something unique and personal about a book that it’s digitization can never duplicate. Our culture still values whats original and unique. And books are some of the most unique creations of civilization. They are little mind bombs set to go off in your head when you least expect it.

I found this nice quote on the Booklad blog, where Dan Poynter discusses some interesting statistics on book reading. Check it out.

Jeff Jarvis also links to the Booklad post and provides some additional book stats (like 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year).

Tim O’Reilly blogged last week about the relaunch of Rice University Press in an on-line centric model. It looks like all of the content will be available for free on-line and readers can pay to order a print copy (which will be printed on demand). According to the original article, authors will be able to amend and annotate their books as well as chat with readers.

Ultimately, cutting edge publishers are giving away more content because it sells more books right? It allows people to preview works they might be interested in purchasing, obviously… My question is, how can the on-line content increase the value of the print copy after they are purchased?

The Exbiblio vision which is about adding value to both printed and on-line content by streamlining the connection between the two. Imagine being able to read a printed work without sacrificing the interactive nature of the on-line edition (the discussion, multimedia content, etc…). Imagine the book as an interface to the rich content.

So, news of rich digital content based on paper documents is exciting for us and we wish Rice University great success!

Hi there,

I’m Hugh Fraser, and I have the privilege of being an outside observer of Exbiblio. I’m a journalist turned blogger based in London. The plan is that over the next year or so, I will write up what I see and overhear at Exbiblio on this blog. I have a licence to write as I see fit: the good, the bad and the ugly. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

I’ve had some unusual assignments in my life, but this is probably “takes the biscuit” as we say in England for out-of-the-ordinary. I’m going to be dropping in on Exbiblio’s office in Seattle about once a month (It’s a ten hour commute from London), and sitting in on any meetings that take my fancy, visiting business partners, and taking notes on all that I see. I hope to get some audio and video going too. I suppose I will be Exbiblio’s “fly on the wall.”

While I’m here in London, I’m getting used to thick and fast Instant Messaging (which I’ve always shunned before) and working evenings on Seattle time.

Exbiblio is a high-tech company that wants to take one of the oldest media in the world – ordinary, crinkly, paper, and turn it into something as interactive as your computer. The inner workings of their technology and ideas completely are beyond my understanding. I will be giving my attention to the culture of a start-up, and I hope highlighting issues that will be of use to anyone involved in any type of business.

Exbiblio has some highly unusual aims. It’s as much about building a shining example for ethical business practice, and funding some altruistic projects, as it is about making money for its backers. In fact that last sentence doesn’t begin to capture extent of its ambitions to change the world for the better, but all will become clear in the posts that follow.

It’s a very young company, and often people start with the best of intentions and lose them later. My feeling about the people at Exbiblio is that they are truly determined to stick to their principles all the way. We shall see….

Welcome to the Exbiblio blogs!

I’m Adam Behringer, and I’ve been asked to throw open the doors of Exbiblio, introducing you to our team and the work we are doing. We’ll have plenty of opportunity to dive into our ambitious plans to transform the experience of interacting with paper documents, but if you want a sneak peek, take a look at our website.

I would describe myself as an entrepreneur and a creator. I also play piano and I like to apply the improvisational and collaborative ideas of a small group jazz ensemble to business and software design. For the past month or two at Exbiblio, I have been a part of a software team that is rapidly prototyping sample applications of our technology for our internal use as we quest to find the critical utility that will be the core of our future product.

We’ve also engaged british business journalist Hugh Fraser to blog his perspective of our work. Hugh is a fabulous writer and it will be fun to have an outside perspective represented on the blogs.

I also wanted to send a shout out to Timothy Appnel for handling many of the technical details in getting this blog system launched. Thanks Tim!

Lastly, I believe I speak for all of us when I say that the “success” of this blog will depend on the quality of the conversation we can have with our readers and the community. I encourage you to ask questions, challenge our assumptions, share your experiences, and join us in the quest to bring new life to paper documents.