Marcelo Henrique Almeida is the owner of World Wide Publishing International. He is also the author of a number of articles, including many law articles for the site, caderno de direito. He has several books forthcoming in Kindle format. Based in Sao Paulo, World Wide Publishing specializes in the Latin American market, publishing materials in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
For more about World Wide Publishing International, Marcelo maintains a Facebook page and has uploaded a video about the company's mission on YouTube.
1. What inspired you to start WWP International?
What inspired me to start WWP is the monopoly that physical books still have over information. If you need specialized information, searching online won't do much for you. If you take a step back and analyze the way that written information is organized on the internet, you'll see that everybody writes in the form of articles. The internet is like a big newspaper that allows you to scratch the surface on subjects that you didn't even know existed, but if you want to go deep, you have to pay sometimes a lot for a good book. This was my main inspiration for WWP, the price of high-level information. I think it should be cheap and available to everyone who wishes to learn. Price shouldn't be a barrier for education.
2. What are some of the ebooks you'll be releasing in 2013?
We'll be releasing 2 books in 2013.
One is called An Atheist God where we try to answer some philosophical questions: Does destiny follow rules? If we knew these rules, how would our life be? Would I be able to control it or predict? Why do some people with the most difficult childhood experiences have more success that other people? What is it that they know?
The other one is called The Fat Trap. I'm really excited about this book, because I've struggled with weight for a good part of my life and as I was trying to lose it, I clearly saw that something else was going on.
All the standard answers were not enough to explain why everybody was gaining weight, including myself. It wasn't a generalized lack of will; it wasn't lifestyle or the lack or exercises. It was the kind of food we were eating and the effects of that food on our brain. The food industry puts you in a trap by offering you cheap, engineered food and the diet industry charges you a lot of money to fill you with advice that we all know doesn't work as it should. And both industries work to convince that this is all your fault so you should pay them without even questioning what's going on.
3. How do you see the role of ebooks expanding in the South American market in particular over the next few years?
I think that e-books will expand exponentially over South America; they have a huge potential, but only if companies understand how this market works, and at the moment they don't. The key to spread e-books is the tablet. People won't read an e-book on their computer screen or mobile phone. In that aspect, Amazon and Steve Jobs saved the e-book from being a media format that wasn't going anywhere. But in South America, tablets are expensive, costing twice or three times what you pay on US and it's not unusual to see magazine publishers or book publishers charging a lot more for e-books than the physical version of their product. There's no reason for this. They are not paying for paper or distribution. Amazon spent a lot of money to spread e-books and the Kindle, but now some publishers are trying to do things their own way and think it will work. If they don't adapt fast, they will fail and blame the internet as they always do.
4. As an author and publisher, why have you chosen to emphasize digital modes of publication for your work?
I love physical books, but we are living in an age when information gets old really fast. A sixty dollar book today can worth nothing tomorrow because it's outdated. It's a high-risk investment. Digital formats are cheaper, easy to distribute, and can be updated in real time. You pay us once, but you'll have the best and newest information forever with you. No more feeling bad about the release of a newly updated edition of a book you love.
5. What advice would you give to authors who want to get their work out to an international market?
It all comes down to one question: What's your passion? What's that thing that you always want to talk about even when people don't ask? Write about it. There's no good book without passion. It doesn't matter if you'll charge one dollar or ten dollars: write a book, not just a Word document with your ideas. Always check your spelling and grammar, and you are set.
Never in human history was it so easy to distribute your thoughts and ideas for all the world to see, but the flip side of this is that you'll find a lot of easy-money garbage out there. People write something in one afternoon and put it up for sale on Amazon for a dollar. If you have written a book with passion and taken the time to create an excellent final product, everyone everywhere will read it.
Thanks, Marcelo!
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