Calling All Apes/Mutants: Let’s Make History Together

When we acquired Ape #1798 at the floor back in May, we knew we’d acquired the Bored Ape Yacht Club Valet. It was early days in the profile-picture phase of NFT twitter, and people hadn’t started building backstories or worlds around their avatars. At that point in time, Ape #1798 was just… Ape #1798.

But we couldn’t ignore 1798’s Work Vest and Boho Hat combination. We immediately recognized him as a Valet. Overnight his name came to us, and Jenkins was born. Several months later, Sean Dickens of Yahoo! would coin the phrase “Thematic Ape” in a post that recognized Jenkins as the most popular ape with matching traits that suggest a certain type of backstory. Back in May, we didn’t think of a phrase that clear, but we knew that there was something special about #1798. We knew he was a service ape with a story.

Ape #1798 aka Jenkins the Valet

Of course, many people had similar experiences when they first minted or purchased their Apes or Mutants. In fact, this still happens today for new community members, and it’s one of our favorite parts of the space. Every avatar has a rich backstory waiting to be fleshed out.

However, the act of fleshing out a backstory takes time. We worked around the clock defining aspects of the Jenkins voice, what he cares about, where he’s from, and of course how he interacts with and serves other Apes and Mutants. If there had been a platform to help build and tell Apes’ and Mutants’ stories back in May when we bought Jenkins, that surely would have made our lives easier.

This is exactly why we built The Writer’s Room and what we hope Jenkins can be for the entire BAYC/MAYC community. This is why we are so excited that 6,942 Apes or Mutants have the opportunity to be featured in our first book. With our 10x NYT Bestseller, Neil Strauss, at the helm and ~2,600 passionate members of the Writer’s Room voting on creative direction, we are thrilled to bring to market the first instance of mass IP development for this space.

We believe that this first book from The Writer’s Room will have an important place in NFT history for a few reasons:

1. It is the first instance of Web3 enabling thousands of individuals from all over the world to come together and dictate what happens in long-form fiction content.
2. It is the first instance of mass IP licensing in the NFT space. Up to 6,942 Apes and Mutants can license out their likeness to appear in this book and earn royalties from the book’s sales. 50% of all Net Profits will be split evenly among licensors.
3. It is the first instance of a mainstream, conventionally successful author diving into Web3 and writing an NFT native work.

At this point, fellow Apes and Mutants, you’re probably wondering how it will all work. Let’s dive in.

There are 2 ways for your Ape or Mutant to appear in the book.

1. You can purchase a Writer’s Room NFT on OpenSea. The tier of our NFT that you own dictates the level of involvement your Ape or Mutant has in the book, but all tiers split the 50% of net profit that is set aside for licensors.
2. You can partner with a Writer’s Room member who does not have an Ape or Mutant. You bring the Ape or Mutant (IP) and they bring the Writer’s Room NFT (access). Your avatar cannot appear in our work without a level of involvement defined by our Writer’s Room NFT. To that end, your avatar’s exposure in the book depends on the tier of Writer’s Room NFT that your licensing partner owns.

• Tier 1 (WAGMI Yacht): Your Ape or Mutant is written into the book as a character by name
• Tier 2 (Valet Stand): Your Ape or Mutant is illustrated in the book as an “extra”
• Tier 3 (Yacht Key): Your Ape or Mutant is featured in a game of “Where’s Jenkins”
• Tier 4 (Valet Ticket): Your Ape or Mutant is featured in the acknowledgements

In our member-only portal, our community members will be able to license their own Apes or Mutants to the book. They’ll also be able to send agreements out to Ape and Mutant holders who are not members of our Writer’s Room in order to create the partnership that is outlined above. This all occurs natively within our custom built web app. There are nearly 30,000 Apes and Mutants in the world, and there will only be 6,942 licensing spots available.

When you sign a licensing agreement with The Writer’s Room, you do not give us exclusive rights to your avatar. In fact, you only give us the rights to use your IP in this first book and direct derivatives (i.e. it gets optioned for film). This license does not prevent you from doing other things with your avatar. The license you sign with us is entirely nonexclusive.

The same is true if you sign an agreement to make a partnership with a Writer’s Room member. If you are an Ape or a Mutant who is not a member of our Writer’s Room but you make a partnership for access, you are not signing a blanket license. You only give the Writer’s Room member the ability to apply their Writer’s Room involvement tier to your avatar. They cannot use your Ape or Mutant anywhere else.

We have labored over these legal agreements for months, and we will be publishing a separate Medium post that breaks down the licensing agreements. It will explain how we landed on each term, and it will tell you a bit more about the amazing Entertainment and IP lawyers who worked with us to build them. On top of that, we will be open-sourcing these agreements so that other projects can enable their holders to earn revenue for sharing and licensing their NFT IP.

You sign the agreement, but the avatar makes the money.

Another critical aspect of our licensing process is that royalties are tied to your Ape or Mutant in perpetuity. When you sign a licensing agreement with us, you agree for your share of royalties to be paid to the wallet that holds the Ape or Mutant. This means if you transfer it or if you sell it to someone else, their wallet will be paid future royalties.

This means that by licensing your Ape or Mutant to this work, it becomes more attractive on the open market. Listing an Ape or Mutant that has been licensed means listing an income stream based on future royalties to be paid in exchange for that avatar appearing in our work. We have built a feature that will allow anyone to check if a BAYC or MAYC NFT has been licensed to our work so that we can enable smarter buying/selling.

Now that the licensing and royalty mechanic is clear… Where will the money come from?

We hope to monetize this book in a few ways:

1. NFT-native book sales. We will sell copies of the book as NFTs. We’ve hinted quite a bit that this NFT will be a whole lot more than a book. It serves as the catalyst for Writer’s Room 2.0 with burn/hold game theory. We believe those who mint this book will be rewarded handsomely, and for this reason we are bullish on the book’s ability to sell. As licensors, you will be entitled to 50% of Net Profits from this primary sale.
2. Royalties owed to us from book NFT sales on the secondary market. Each time a book NFT is traded on the secondary market, we will earn a royalty. Again, we are bullish on secondary sales volume based on the game theory and utility we’ll attach to it. As licensors, you will be entitled to 50% of Net Profits from the commission we make on every secondary sale.
3. Traditional publishing. While this is not guaranteed, we believe we have a path to selling this book in the traditional way too. We are represented by CAA, the leading global talent agency, across books, film, tv, podcasting, and more. We’ve worked with our literary agents to determine a revenue goal for our primary NFT sale that would tell a strong story to publishers. If we hit this goal, our agents believe that the book could be picked up and have the potential to sell many copies in the mainstream market. This outcome is not guaranteed, but as our licensors, you would be entitled to 50% of Net Profits from traditional publishing (advance, royalties, etc).
4. Direct derivatives of the book for Film and TV. We worked hard to find an amazing author who would write a compelling story for the mainstream. We all know that NFTs are on the precipice of breaking into mainstream culture, and we are hopeful that we can find a buyer (studio, streaming service, etc) that sees the value in investing in NFT-native content. Like traditional book publishing, this outcome is not guaranteed, but like all other revenue streams, as our licensors, you’d be entitled to 50% of Net Profits from Film/TV adaptations of this direct work.

Where we go from here…

We sincerely hope you will join us on this journey to disrupt how content is both created and distributed in the Web3 era. On Sunday, 11/28 we will host a Town Hall to walk people through our member-only portal. We will give everyone a sneak peek before next week’s launch, and we’d love to see you there.

If you’d like to purchase a Writer’s Room NFT to license your Ape or Mutant, you may do so on OpenSea.

If you’d like to partner with a Writer’s Room NFT holder to license your Ape or Mutant without spending on one of our Writer’s Room NFTs, you can join our Discord and pop into the 🤝#licensing-partnerships channel to meet our members. There are hundreds of them who are willing to pair their Writer’s Room NFTs with your Apes or Mutants.

It’s been well documented over the last few weeks that #WeAreBookPeople. Now let’s come together and write a damn book.