When I tell people in publishing that we’ve released a book about Bitcoin, the reaction usually falls into one of two categories. Some people are curious, even excited. Others give me a look that suggests I’ve just told them we’re publishing a book about alchemy or flat earth theory. The skepticism is real, and I understand where it comes from. Cryptocurrency has been associated with speculation, scams, and breathless hype for so long that many serious people have written it off entirely.

I’m not here to convince you that Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar or that blockchain will solve all of society’s problems. I don’t believe either of those things. What I do believe is that the technology behind cryptocurrency has specific, practical implications for the publishing industry that deserve honest examination. That’s why we published Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners by Alexander Hawthorne, and it’s why I’m writing this post.

The Problem Crypto Might Actually Solve

Publishing has a money problem, and I’m not talking about profitability (though that’s a problem too). I’m talking about the infrastructure through which money moves from readers to creators. The current system is, to put it politely, inefficient.

When you buy a book, your payment goes to the retailer, who takes their cut and sends the rest to the distributor, who takes their cut and sends the rest to the publisher, who takes their cut and eventually sends the rest to the author. This chain involves multiple intermediaries, each adding processing time and cost. An author typically waits months to receive royalties from a sale that happened in real time. The royalty statements they eventually receive are complex documents that even experienced authors sometimes struggle to verify.

This system works, in the sense that money eventually gets where it’s supposed to go. But it’s slow, opaque, and stacked with intermediaries who each take a percentage. For an industry where margins are already thin and creators are already underpaid, the inefficiency of the payment chain is a real issue.

Cryptocurrency, specifically the blockchain technology that underlies it, offers a potential alternative. A blockchain-based payment system could, in theory, allow direct transactions between reader and creator with fewer intermediaries, faster settlement, and transparent accounting. When someone buys your book, you could see the payment arrive in near real-time. The transaction would be recorded on a public ledger that both parties can verify. Smart contracts could automate royalty splits, distributing payments to co-authors, agents, and other collaborators instantly.

That’s the theory. The practice is more complicated, which I’ll get to. But the underlying idea, that blockchain could make publishing’s financial infrastructure more efficient and transparent, is worth taking seriously.

Direct-to-Reader Sales

The most immediately practical application of cryptocurrency in publishing is direct-to-reader sales. Right now, most book sales go through a small number of massive retailers, with Amazon dominating the market. These retailers provide valuable services (discovery, fulfillment, customer trust), but they also control the relationship between publisher and reader, and they take a substantial cut of every transaction.

Some publishers and authors have experimented with selling directly to readers through their own websites. This eliminates the retailer’s cut and gives the publisher direct access to customer data (which is valuable for marketing). But direct sales have historically been limited by the friction of payment processing. Setting up a payment system, managing credit card fees, dealing with international transactions, handling refunds: these are operational headaches that small publishers would rather avoid.

Cryptocurrency could simplify some of this. A reader anywhere in the world could send payment directly to a publisher’s wallet with minimal fees and no dependence on traditional banking infrastructure. International transactions, which are particularly expensive and complicated with traditional payment processors, become trivially easy with crypto. A reader in Nigeria and a reader in Norway pay using the same system with the same fees.

At ScrollWorks, we’ve been exploring this on a small scale. We’re not ready to go fully crypto for our sales (most readers still prefer traditional payment methods, and we respect that), but we’re interested in the option. For our non-fiction titles especially, where the audience tends to be more technically savvy, cryptocurrency payment could be a natural fit.

Smart Contracts and Royalty Distribution

Smart contracts are probably the most interesting blockchain application for publishing, and also the least understood. A smart contract is a program that runs on a blockchain and automatically executes when certain conditions are met. In a publishing context, a smart contract could be programmed to distribute royalties automatically every time a sale occurs.

Here’s how it might work. A book is published with an associated smart contract that specifies: 15% of each sale goes to the author, 10% to the agent, 5% to the cover designer (if they negotiated a royalty share), and the remainder to the publisher. Every time someone buys the book, the smart contract executes and distributes the payment according to these pre-set percentages. Instantly. Automatically. With a transparent, verifiable record of every transaction.

Compare this to the current system, where royalties are calculated quarterly (if you’re lucky), summarized in statements that can be difficult to audit, and paid months after the actual sales occurred. A smart contract system would give authors real-time visibility into their sales and instant access to their earnings. For authors who depend on royalty income, this would be a meaningful improvement in their financial lives.

The practical barriers are significant. Smart contract platforms still have scalability and cost issues. The legal and tax implications are complex and vary by jurisdiction. And the publishing industry’s existing infrastructure isn’t set up to integrate with blockchain systems. These are solvable problems, but they’ll take time and investment to solve.

Digital Ownership and the Ebook Problem

Here’s something that bothers me about ebooks: when you buy one, you don’t really own it. You own a license to access it through a specific platform, and that license can be revoked. Amazon can (and has) remotely deleted books from people’s Kindles. If Amazon goes out of business, or if you lose access to your account, your entire ebook library could disappear.

Blockchain technology offers a potential solution. An ebook could be minted as a digital asset (sometimes called an NFT, though that term carries a lot of baggage from the speculative art market). The owner would hold the asset in their own digital wallet, independent of any platform. They could prove ownership, transfer it to another person, or even resell it, all without needing permission from a centralized platform.

The resale point is particularly interesting. Physical books can be resold, lent, donated, and given away. Ebooks can’t. This is a fundamental limitation of the current digital book ecosystem, and it’s one that readers rightfully find frustrating. Blockchain-based ebooks could restore the first-sale doctrine to digital books, allowing readers to resell or give away ebooks they’ve finished with.

Authors and publishers would need to work out how resale royalties would function. One advantage of blockchain is that smart contracts could ensure a percentage of every resale goes back to the author. Used book sales currently generate zero revenue for authors. Blockchain-based resale could change that, creating a secondary market where authors participate in the ongoing value of their work.

The Micropayment Possibility

Traditional payment processing makes very small transactions impractical. Credit card fees and minimum charges mean that a payment of ten cents costs more to process than it’s worth. This has locked publishing into a model where content comes in large, expensive chunks (full books) with occasional experiments in smaller formats (individual stories or chapters) that have mostly failed commercially.

Cryptocurrency micropayments could change this. On some blockchain networks, you can send fractions of a cent with negligible fees. This opens up possibilities for content monetization that don’t currently exist. A reader could pay ten cents to read a single essay or short story. A subscription service could distribute tiny payments to authors based on actual readership rather than opaque allocation formulas. Serialized fiction could be sold chapter by chapter at prices that feel almost free to the reader but accumulate into meaningful revenue for the writer.

I find this possibility exciting because it could create new economic models for kinds of writing that currently have no viable business model. Short fiction, literary essays, poetry, experimental work: these forms struggle financially because they don’t fit the traditional book-length publishing model. If micropayments could create a direct economic link between writer and reader for any length of text, it could support a wider variety of literary work than the current system does.

The Skeptic’s Objections (and My Responses)

I’ve presented the optimistic case. Let me address the objections, because they’re real and I take them seriously.

“Crypto is too volatile to use as a payment system.” This is true for many cryptocurrencies, and it’s a legitimate concern. Bitcoin’s price has swung wildly, making it a poor store of value for day-to-day transactions. However, stablecoins (cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies) address this problem. A payment made in a dollar-pegged stablecoin has the blockchain’s technical advantages without the price volatility. Stablecoin payment wouldn’t require authors or publishers to speculate on crypto markets.

“The environmental cost of crypto is unacceptable.” This was a strong argument a few years ago, when Bitcoin mining consumed enormous amounts of energy. The situation has improved. Bitcoin’s mining increasingly uses renewable energy, and many newer blockchain networks use proof-of-stake systems that consume a fraction of Bitcoin’s energy. The environmental objection remains valid for some cryptocurrencies but is less universal than it was.

“Nobody wants to pay for books with crypto.” Right now, that’s largely true. Most readers are perfectly happy with credit cards and existing payment systems. But payment preferences change. Twenty years ago, most people were nervous about entering credit card numbers online. Ten years ago, mobile payments seemed fringe. Technology adoption follows patterns, and what seems marginal today can become mainstream faster than expected. We don’t need everyone to switch to crypto overnight. We need the infrastructure to be ready for those who want to use it.

“The crypto space is full of scams and bad actors.” This is unquestionably true, and it’s one of the reasons we published Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners. Alexander Hawthorne’s book is specifically designed to help people navigate the crypto space safely and skeptically, understanding what’s genuine and what’s hype. (You can find it on Amazon here.) The existence of bad actors in a technology space doesn’t invalidate the technology itself. The early internet was full of scams too. We didn’t abandon the internet; we developed better tools and literacy to navigate it.

What We’re Doing at ScrollWorks

I want to be transparent about where we are in this journey. We’re early. We’re experimenting. We haven’t committed to any specific blockchain platform or cryptocurrency, and we’re not telling anyone they should rush to adopt crypto for their publishing operations.

What we are doing is educating ourselves and our authors. Part of that education was publishing Alexander Hawthorne’s book, which gives readers the foundational knowledge they need to understand Bitcoin and cryptocurrency without getting swept up in hype or falling for scams. If you’re curious about crypto but feel overwhelmed by the jargon and the noise, that book is a good starting point.

We’re also watching the space closely. Several startups are building blockchain-based tools for publishers, from smart contract royalty platforms to decentralized ebook marketplaces. Some of these will fail. Some might succeed in ways that change how our industry works. We want to be informed enough to adopt useful tools when they’re ready, without being so eager that we adopt bad ones prematurely.

Our approach is pragmatic. We’re interested in any technology that could help authors get paid faster, help readers own their purchases more fully, and help publishers operate more transparently. Blockchain has the potential to do all of these things. Whether it will actually deliver on that potential is a question nobody can answer with certainty today.

The Bigger Picture

Stepping back from the specifics, I think the most important thing cryptocurrency represents for publishing is the possibility of disintermediation: cutting out middlemen between creators and audiences. Publishing, like most media industries, has historically required layers of intermediaries to connect writers with readers. Agents, publishers, distributors, retailers, each serving a function but each also adding cost and complexity to the chain.

The internet already disintermediated some of these layers. Self-publishing platforms allow authors to reach readers without traditional publishers. Social media allows authors to build audiences without traditional publicists. Cryptocurrency could disintermediate the financial layer, allowing direct economic relationships between creators and consumers with minimal friction.

I don’t think intermediaries will disappear. Publishers, editors, and designers add genuine value that most authors need. But the balance of power could shift. If authors have more direct access to revenue and more transparent visibility into their sales, they’ll have more leverage in negotiations and more options for how to bring their work to market. That’s healthy for the ecosystem, even if it means publishers like us need to clearly demonstrate our value rather than assuming it.

The convergence of publishing and cryptocurrency is still in its early stages. Five years from now, we might look back on this period the way we look back on the early days of ebooks: a time of confusion and uncertainty that eventually resolved into a transformed industry. Or we might look back and realize that crypto’s impact on publishing was more modest than the optimists predicted. Either way, paying attention now and thinking seriously about the possibilities seems like the responsible thing to do.

Books like The Cartographer’s Dilemma by David Okonkwo remind us that maps are always redrawn, that the territories we thought we understood are always shifting. The same is true of the publishing industry. The map of how books get made, distributed, and paid for is being redrawn right now. Cryptocurrency is one of the forces doing the redrawing. Whether you’re enthusiastic about that or skeptical, understanding the technology, what it can and can’t do, what risks it carries, puts you in a better position to navigate what comes next.

Published by the ScrollWorks Media editorial team.