At Version One, we love marketplaces. Just look at our portfolio, and you’ll understand how important we think marketplaces are to the future of commerce. Over the past year, we have focused much of our blog content on helping marketplace founders build their companies. That’s because we realized that while there is a lot of great information for tech startups, not much of it deals specifically with marketplaces. And anyone building a marketplace company knows that marketplaces face unique challenges – including how to solve the chicken and egg problem with supply and demand and how to monetize when services are delivered offline. To that end, we put together a handbook, A Guide to Marketplaces. It compiles many of the insights we’ve learned from working with great marketplace companies and analyzing the industry. We hope the handbook helps you in your own journey to break down walls in how goods and services are bought and sold. There’s no single way to build and scale a marketplace, but the book can help you figure out your own path to build supply and spark the virtuous circle of supply and demand. Lastly, we’d love to hear if you find the content useful. What should we expand on? Did we leave anything out? Please leave a comment below or reach out to us directly.

Okie's fifteen. She lives in New York. She's got a few problems: she's failing geography, her dad's a wimp, and her mother, Sumatra, is a stone cold bitch. But things get a lot worse when Sumatra turns into a zombie and eats Okie's dad. Clio, Okie's grandmother, lives in Toronto; but since the zombie apocalypse, Toronto's a lot further away than it used to be. Clio suggests that Okie transport Sumatra across the border, because family is family. But coaching Okie by cellphone isn't easy, and Clio has some zombies of her own to contend with. Luckily she has some garden tools. Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood team up for this unusual two-hander. Encompassing love, death, sex, and the meaning of family, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home will surprise, delight, and convince you of the vital importance of keeping ready supplies of rhubarb and mini-wieners in your freezer at all times. The story unfolds beginning October 24.

Fanfiction from Sherlock Holmes to Fifty Shades of Grey and Beyond . . . What is fanfiction, and what is it not? Why does fanfiction matter? And what makes it so important to the future of literature? Fic is a groundbreaking exploration of the history and culture of fan writing and what it means for the way we think about reading, writing, and authorship. It's a story about literature, community, and technology-about what stories are being told, who's telling them, how, and why. With provocative discussions from both professional and fan writers, on subjects from Star Trek to The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter, Twilight, and beyond, Fic sheds light on the widely misunderstood world(s) of fanfiction-not only how fanfiction is transforming the literary landscape, but how it already has. See more and where to buy: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/book/fic SPECIAL DISCOUNT: If you've been enjoying the free sample chapters here on Wattpad, my publisher's discounted the e-book on Amazon for a limited time to $3.99 Wattpad link here: http://bit.ly/ficonwattpad. Readers outside the US can find links for the discount here: http://www.smartpopbooks.com/399fic

What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers' ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd's conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.

❝You and me,❞ he whispered, ❝until the end of time.❞ // A chronicle of Junie Bennett's birthdays from the ages of ten to twenty one.

For months Summer is trapped in a cellar with the man who took her - and three other girls: Rose, Poppy, and Violet. His perfect, pure flowers. His family. But flowers can't survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out...

While on his computer, Victor Hastings admires the provocative pictures of girls he's dating. Meanwhile, these girls are posting more and more on Facebook and all the social sites. Now, all the young men in his cramped fraternity are competing for the attention of these online, amateur pinups. And the institution of the college fraternity itself is beginning to be threatened by this emerging, online phenomenon that, in the fall of 2007, has yet to be identified as "Social Media." Three women will make an impact on Victor. Erin Masters is an alluring yet naïve co-ed. Despite outward modesty, she has no reservations about letting friends plaster her provocative images across various social websites. Emily Green-Portsmith comes from wealth and is comparatively more aware of her effect on young men, both on and offline. Technological reliance, however, does not sit well with the house mother of these fraternity boys. She is affectionately known as Ma Red. This feisty, former Vietnam correspondent from the old-school of etiquette and discipline is prepared to make a fight for her traditional values. And throughout these technological and romantic discoveries, Victor wonders: What kind of love is this? ... the wired kind. He explores the pharmaceutical, social and sexual habits of the digital age. Pills are popped, rebellions spark - a young man matures against a set of difficulties unknown to generations past. Can Victor find meaning in the close sensations of a woman from the real world?

Self-made billionaire, Trevor Morrison, recounts his life from being a poor kid from a small town to creating one of the largest companies in the world, all before his 30th birthday. A true underdog tale is told in The Art of the Hustle. When Trevor Morrison graduated high school, he was desperate to find his purpose in life. With a lack of money and viable options at his disposal, he eagerly took advantage of the first opportunity to come his way. The harsh realities of the world were soon revealed as people who he thought he could trust betrayed him. The only thing that he could count on was his hustle - namely his wits and his insatiable desire to forge ahead despite a multitude of setbacks. *** Billionaire, business, startup, hustle, money, millionaire, success, struggle...

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled. Keep reading and be sure to enter The Heart Goes Last Fiction contest!