Shenet, Vulkan & Bloks

I had a good laugh at the Shenet event last night. I wasn't so sure that I could be bothered going along but in the end decided if nothing else it was a good excuse to get out away from home and away from the computer - to meet real people, or at least people in real life.

And I'm so glad I did!

Shenet is a Stockholm based women's network with a strong emphasis on culture and entrepreneurialism. As they say themselves their goal is to promote talented women wanting to make a difference, create change, leave their mark in history and inspire others to do the same. Their target group for members is primarily women with an academic education in a decision-making role either in their own company or employed.

The events always have a theme with guest speakers and seem to cover a broad range of topics and interests. While many, many of the events have seemed interesting I have only been able to prioritise three so far.

Annual membership is a measly 495 sek (+V.A.T.) the first year and 395 sek after that! Now where else can you be a member for that amount, enjoy a glass of wine and something to eat, listen to interesting speakers and leave again with a goody bag? They must have a lot of sponsors!

Now that I have promoted Shenet I have to tell you about last night's event.

Linda Skugge from Vulkan was the guest speaker, actually she was interviewed by Maria Forssén, the founder of Shenet. Linda's concept is a publishing platform that makes it possible for anyone to load up a PDF file and thus publish their own work. As the author you pay nothing, you decide everything, you keep the royalties and make no committment . The books are at this stage only available in pocket format, A5, soft cover but there are more choices are in the pipeline.

Once the printing price is established you decide how much you want to earn from each book and Vulkan take 25% of your margin, then add 6% V.A.T. and voila you have your price. Direct people to your book so they can order directly from the site and watch the sales tick over!

It is a great concept and I can think of many, many people who could benefit from it. I can even think of a couple of different ways I could use it - after all it costs nothing to load it up and if no-one is interested you have nothing to lose. My only criticism would be that the information is only available in Swedish - don't these companies realise how much more attractive they would be if their services were made available to a wider audience?

Following on from this interview was one of Vulkan's authors, Maria Agrell. This zany woman was a thoroughly entertaining speaker and it was great to listen and laugh as she talked a mile a minute, describing her life and experiences as a Swedish expat in Spain. Maria is both an established and a popular blogger who used Vulkan to publish her posts in book format, thus making them available to all her admiring fans. As of last night she had sold an impressive 23 copies of her blok!

Don't worry if you have never heard the word blok before - neither had I and strangely enough I couldn't even find a definition in the Swedish Wikipedia(!)

But clearly book + blog = blok.

Fun, fun, fun & just what I needed.