SPECIFICATIONS FOR AUTHORS ON Kitabu

0. Preliminary Clarifications

We want to clarify from the outset that the Kitabu platform has been designed for African, Afro-descendant and Caribbean authors immediately. We will very likely open up to other spheres of thought in the future. This belonging is one of the decisive criteria for validating submitted projects.

1. Objective

This specifications document aims to establish the conditions and expectations regarding the submission, publication, and management of literary projects on the Kitabu platform. As an African, Afro-descendant or Caribbean author, you are responsible for the quality of your work and its compliance with the criteria defined below.

2. Book Project Submissions

First of all, make sure to register under your author name (the one that will be on the books) if this has not been the case, modify your details in your account settings. When submitting your project, you must have the following information and files beforehand:

• Book title: The complete name of your work and subtitle if applicable.
• Language: Please select the language in which you wish to publish your book. Language that can obviously differ from that of the manuscript you are submitting. Choose the most advantageous language for the target readership but above all, choose the language most compatible with the content of the book.
• Summary: A concise and engaging description of the work. This summary should entice readers to discover the book while respecting the integrity of your narrative.
• Genre: Specify the literary genre (novel, poetry, essay, etc.) and sub-genre if applicable.
• The manuscript: You will need to provide two copies of your manuscript for exploitation. One in PDF format and the other in Word format.
• Book excerpt: Identify the most symbolic passage of your manuscript so that it can be highlighted. Your excerpt can go up to 30,000 characters.
• Promotional message: Here, emphasize the added value of your book. What will the reader find/gain from it? Why should they support your project? Talk about what you want to accomplish with this book (e.g., share an original idea, tell a true story, impact, educate, etc.) What do you bring more to your field of predilection? To literature? To the reading experience in general? Keep in mind that it is this brief text of about 3,000 characters that will propel the crowdfunding.
• Cover: If it is an independent edition and you have already opted for a concrete cover choice, you must provide it. Otherwise, you have the possibility to automatically generate a temporary cover to facilitate the promotion process for the contribution.
• Budget configuration: Some precise information will be requested from you in order to automatically determine the budget required for the production of your book (500 copies) as well as its sale. Make sure to provide the total number of pages, the number of color pages, the type of series (Standard, Premium, Gold/Prestige). Pay attention to the total budget that is displayed as well as the minimum budget required per contributor. Make sure you don't have too high an amount if you are on your first project and don't yet have a large and solid community.
• Contribution limit: It's up to you to delimit your project in time. Define the start date of contributions (which can be postponed following feedback after verification) as well as the end date (which can be shortened if the minimum budget is reached before.)

3. Format and Content of the Work

Your work must meet the following criteria to be accepted on Kitabu:

• Length: The text must be of reasonable length according to the chosen genre (for example, for a novel, a minimum of 10,000 words).
• Integrity: The manuscript must be mindful of your own person. Kitabu encourages authors to avoid any fortuitous unsourced statements in their texts.
• Authenticity: You must be the sole owner of the content you submit, if it is a joint/plural writing, you must be the main author.
• Language: The book can be written in the language of your choice, but it must comply with the grammatical and spelling rules of that language.

4. Submission Process

The process of submitting a project on Kitabu involves several steps:

• Platform registration: You must create an "Author" account on Kitabu in order to submit a project.
• Manuscript submission: Upload your manuscript (in Word or PDF format) along with your summary and other required information specified above.
• Preliminary verification: Kitabu will perform an initial check to ensure that the project meets the platform's quality criteria.
• Community crowdfunding: If your project meets the criteria, it will be submitted to the reader community for crowdfunding.

5. Funding and Pre-sales

Project funding is done on a participatory basis. Once your project is accepted, it will be put online and the reader community can begin to financially support your work in the form of pre-sales. The steps are as follows:

• Funding goal: The minimum amount for the pre-financing of your work will be automatically predefined according to some information you will provide about the book. This amount represents the production and publication costs.
• Rewards for contributors: Each contributor will receive a physical copy and a digital version in NFT form.
• Fund collection: You must reach your funding goal for the project to be validated and the editing process to begin. Kitabu will take care of promoting you and your work according to the means at its disposal.

6. Production Process

Once the project funding is validated, the production process begins:

• Collaboration with supply chain actors: You will work only with the editorial manager assigned to your project, who will be in charge of the proofreader(s), reviewer, graphic designer, and other professionals engaged to improve the quality of your work.
• Manuscript editing: The text will be corrected and finalized to be ready for printing and publication.
• Final validation (BAT): You will need to validate the final version of your work (BAT - Ready to print) before its printing or digital publication.

7. Copyright and Remuneration

Ownership of rights and remuneration:

• Ownership of rights: You remain the owner of the work and retain all copyright, except for the limited editions that Kitabu will produce. You hold these in co-ownership with Kitabu sarl. Once published with Kitabu Sarl, you can no longer proceed with partial or total re-edition in digital format (NFT, Ebook, Epub, etc.) of your work. This obviously implies that works already in circulation in digital format assigned to other owners must be revoked or will not be accepted. You nevertheless remain free to dispose of your manuscript as you see fit for a future paper edition or for another form of distribution after the expiration of the publishing contract.
• Remuneration: Once the pre-sale is completed and the production process is finished, you will receive 37% of the revenue generated by your work, which is much more than in traditional publishing.
• You will also receive 10% of the amount from the resale of your digital book continuously.
• Rights management via Blockchain: The Kitabu platform uses Blockchain technology to ensure the traceability and transparency of copyright. Each transaction and each sale will be automatically processed by Smart contracts.

8. Author Responsibilities

As an author, you have several responsibilities towards the Kitabu platform:

• Subscription: In order to provide you with quality support from the online publication of your book to its distribution, Kitabu Sarl engages various service providers among other promotional charges. To this end, an annual subscription of 25,000 CFA francs will be required once one of your books reaches the editing stage.
• Content quality: You must ensure that the manuscript is ready for publication and does not contain plagiarism.
• Commitment to the community: You will need to interact with readers and contributors throughout the process (answering questions, providing updates on progress, etc.).
• Project promotion: Although Kitabu helps disseminate your project, it is your responsibility to participate in promoting your work to maximize its success.

9. Publication and Distribution Conditions

The publication and distribution conditions are as follows:

• Publication: Once your project is validated, it will be published on the Kitabu platform as a book project for publication in physical and digital format.
• Distribution: Physical books will be printed and delivered to contributors, while NFTs will be sent digitally.
• Exclusivity: Kitabu Sarl will publish your book in limited edition in physical and digital form. You assign the rights to the digital version; you are co-owner of the limited physical versions but retain full rights for other future editions of your manuscript (for example, a standard edition or another form of non-digital distribution)

10. Termination and General Conditions

Termination and general conditions:

• Project withdrawal: You can withdraw your project at any time before it reaches the funding goal. After this point, the project will be considered validated and the production process will begin.
• Project cancellation: If a project does not meet quality standards or violates Kitabu's conditions, it may be canceled by the platform and the contributions collected so far (in case they had started) will be fully redistributed to contributors.

11. Confidentiality

All information you submit (manuscript, personal information, etc.) will be treated confidentially and securely on Kitabu. We respect personal data protection standards. Please refer to our Privacy Policy.