The launch of FortyChapters couldn’t have gone better. For those that don’t know FortyChapters helps would-be authors write a book online.  It’s been a little less than two weeks and so far the uptake has been great. 

For such a niche service, people seem to be responding really well to the basic idea of drafting and writing a book entirely online. We’ve already started offering advice on the service itself as well as basic writing tips (not that we claim to be experts). There have been a few technical glitches pointed out by the users - but nothing we can’t handle.

We got a great review on Mashable which really drove traffic to the site and spurred sign-ups. That review was also heavily syndicated/scrapped out to other sites. Many other sites like Launch Feed also covered our new webapp. And we even got a few votes on KillerStartups.

The thing that makes me most happy though, is examining our web analytics I can see lots of people finding FortyChapters by searching for it by name. This suggests to me that people are actually talking about the service offline which is fantastic. 

We’ve been asked about starting a blog for would-be authors but it might make more sense to just provide daily tips for our authors and links to better established writing blogs. We know there’s already a lot of great advice and content out there for writers so why reinvent the wheel?

The initial buzz hasn’t quite worn off yet, but the site should settle into more routine traffic levels soon. But we still have a few ideas up our sleeve so watch this space.

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