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FortyChapters

FortyChapters is a fee paying service, but at $10 per month is very affordable. The first 30 days are free to let users determine for themselves if their idea has enough merit to make it to a book.

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Upstart name:
FortyChapters

Upstart URL:
http://www.fortychapters.com

Date of launch:
November 10, 2008

Tell us about your upstart business:
FortyChapters helps would-be authors write their first novel, entirely online. The site walks aspiring writers through a straight forward process which builds the story's characters, acts and chapters.

For many, the process of beginning to write, of looking at the blank page can be daunting. FortyChapters aims to ease that pain by guiding the user in small increments towards the end goal of a finished professional manuscript.

The user can print or export their manuscript in multiple formats, so when their story has turned into a book and is ready to move to the next stage it's easy.

How are you funding your Upstart?:
Personal Savings

Upstart launch budget?:
$8000

What do you feel is your biggest challenge?:
Bringing a new idea to market can be a tough sell. It's easy to try move the market further in one step then they're willing to move. Websites exist offering public writing, or collaborative efforts. Writing a book online, privately and with the goal of publishing, is a novel idea though.

Only time will tell if we manage to convince people who want to write a book that they can online with us.

What do you see in the future for your upstart?:
We would like to progress from helping people write books to helping them publish books. But that is very much a long term goal, for now we are content focusing on making the writing process as simple and straight-forward as possible.

How has the current economy affected your upstart?:
We launched at the beginning of the downturn and the timing did weigh on our thinking. But the true test for any business is the ability to survive and indeed grow in a poor environment. And a valuable mantra for any new business is the timing will never be perfect, when it's ready - it's ready.

Your Upstart Services:
MMC is a small Dublin based software company. We typically work on bespoke projects but has recently expanded our offerings to include direct-to-consumer webapps. FortyChapters is our first public service.

Recommended Services / Advice:
We're a humble software company, not really suited to offering up advice. There is however, a great amount of information online worth reading - particularly some of the gurus that walk among us:

Seth Godin - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
Guy Kawasaki - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
Rank Fishkin and Co - http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Contact email address:
contact@mmcsoftware.com

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