The Fictionary is comprised of these little fictionaries, a term Byard created and defines as a free, look-up capable custom Kindle dictionary of fictitious terms, places, and people in literature. The content is derived and created from the multitude of community-driven wikis already available. Byard began his project a couple years ago as a side hobby, and then about 6 months back he began setting himself up for a bigger shot at the market. He wrote some code to pull the data into Kindle format while working on the Wiki syntax. The Fictionary is still very early in its existence, and the LLC was only approved July 2014 while the site launched in August 2014. Initially, Byard wanted to charge customers for the Fictionaries, but he quickly realized that because of where his content was stemming from – open license Wikis – anybody could take his content as well. He also ran into the issue that people might not want to buy this content. Ultimately, Byard decided to offer the library of The Fictionary content entirely for free to create a market for himself, so to speak. Currently he’s got some ads running on the site to bring in some revenue, but the more exciting aspect is that he’s been in talk with self-publishing authors who want to get featured on the site with their own Fictionaries. The technology already exists for Byard, and all he’s doing is using it in a new way. Somebody, in the beginning of the e-reader boom, built in a dictionary for these devices. And then they built in the ability to put in custom dictionaries, which were mainly used for translation purposes. In other words, this market is ripe for innovation. And the over 1,000 early-adopters of Byard’s platform would tend to agree. Surely, Byard has a long road ahead of him, but there’s something vital he has on his side: a pain point screaming to be solved. Further, he’s got the wherewithal to solve it, and his competition is relatively non-existent. I smell a win, but only time will tell; we’ll keep you updated on all that Byard does.
