Wiley has teamed with author Jon Fisher to create an NFT (non-fungible token) author trading card, or a unique digital artifact, to promote the publication of Fisher’s forthcoming title I Took the Only Path to See You, a business self-help title to be published this September.
Digital media is no stranger to Fisher, who is also the CEO and cofounder of CrowdOptic, an augmented reality software company. His NFT author trading card features an image of the author along with text from a commencement speech Fisher gave at the University of San Francisco, and which also inspired his forthcoming book. The NFT also has an easter egg (“Wiley 00001”), or hidden and embedded content, placed just above the image of the author’s shoulder.
The Fisher NFT author trading card was placed on sale at auction on Open Sea, a digital marketplace for NFTs. Fisher and Wiley claim that this is the first NFT author trading card.
Wiley editor Brian Neill said the NFT author trading card is an effort to explore the use of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain for book marketing and promotion. Fisher, Neill said, approached Wiley about experimenting with an NFT for his forthcoming book.
“Jon approached us with the idea of experimenting with an NFT, both as a means to promote his upcoming book and to create a new market for authors across all of publishing. We were excited to collaborate in this relatively new medium and explore its potential to help shape the future of book promotion and publishing,” Neill said.
Bids for the Fisher NFT trading card have reached 5.90 Ethereum, or about $13,000. Ethereum is among several cryptocurrencies used to buy and sell digital artifacts on the Open Sea marketplace.
In an email exchange with Fisher, he described offering the NFT trading card as “a rare opportunity,” and said the auction had attracted about 2400 views on OpenSea. “I think this is successful enough that some of the biggest names in the industry will rush in with their own NFTs, so I think Wiley and I created a new category of trading card,” Fisher said.
Fisher said he is not a digital art collector himself. Asked about the environmental concerns around NFTs—enormous amounts of energy is needed to power the creation and maintenance of NFTs, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain—Fisher said: “There are many concerns, but the exponential value generated is already serving to lessen the environmental impact due to carbon credit offsets,” Fisher said.
“A portion of the proceeds from this auction will be donated to charity, including our daughter’s school and local ocean clean-up," he continued. " We live on the ocean in Tiburon, California and our daughter became scuba certified during the virus lockdowns at the minimum age of 10 years old. We all care deeply about the ocean," Fisher said.
