WaveCloud brings together authors and readers

Ask and you shall receive. Yesterday I wrote about The Reading Room, an Australian site that combines social conversation about books with the ability for people talking about those books to buy them. It's a step forward in integrating two things people do with books- buy them and talk about them.

In the comment section Jason M. and I were talking about all the options out there for authors and what's next. I wrote:

"I feel like the feature I'd like to see added to this one is somehow making it easy for the author to talk with avid fans through the site, some kind of massive google hangout-type option that would become part of a new book launch the way touring bookstores was until it got too expensive for most."

Amazingly enough, what do I learn about this morning but a site that does exactly that, called WaveCloud. The lead sentence on their About Us page reads:

"WaveCloud brings authors and readers together in new, collaborative ways by removing the existing barriers between writers and their audiences and enabling a stronger, more direct relationship between them."

They created the site expressly to give authors and readers a chance, "to connect with each other in ways outside the transactional experience of the book purchase."

I love it.

The site is well designed and clearly the founders mean what they type from the heart. One of the things I continually am struck by with new eBook-related companies is just how passionate the founders are about improving the eBook buying and reading experience- WaveCloud exemplifies that.

Authors can come from traditional publishing houses or approach WaveCloud directly. WaveCloud offers reader-messaging services, sales and audience analytics, and a lot of other services for creating the book in the first place.

They have brought together the conversation between reader and author as a core piece of their service- that's pretty impressive.

Have you tried WaveCloud or any other platform where authors can talk with readers?

Image courtesy of WaveCloud homepage screenshot