Internet Publishing Can Pay Off 161
An anonymous reader writes "Leander Kahney of Wired News has an article (Net Publishing Made Profitable) about how the publishers of the free, online newsletter TidBITS have hit the jackpot with their highly focused Take Control ebook series (nicely formatted PDFs that are easy to read on screen or print). Authors earn 50% royalties, and the books cost $5 or $10, with free updates. All the books out right now are about Mac topics, but maybe they'll branch out in the future."
Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Effects of free online publishing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:American stupidity or political correctness ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't Always Work (Score:3, Interesting)
See the story http://slashdot.org/features/00/11/30/1238204.sht
Re:Yes, but (Score:2, Interesting)
IPOD? Had it back when it was called the Archos Jukebox, nobody cared. Itunes? Had it when it was called "eMusic.com" Nobody praised emusic or archos as visionaries. I wasn't a cosmopolitan hipster for having these things.
Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
For those too lazy to RTFA: None of the books has any kind of copy protection, though Adobe's PDF format contains various digital-rights management mechanisms. "It's not worth doing it all, because it just causes problems," Engst said.
...Engst asks his customers to treat the books as they would physical books: Feel free to share with a couple of friends, but don't post them on the Net. Engst has been aware of no abuse, and none of the books has shown up on file-sharing networks.
Now admittedly I download now and then, but in this instance we've got a content producer that is:
- Small and independent
- Compensating writers fairly
- Charging a very reasonable price
- Choosing not to use DRM, despite having the option to do so, and even *gasp* encouraging people to share with their friends.
I have nothing but contempt for someone that would violate the copyright on this. After all, isn't this the direction the Slashthink wants the music industry to take?
Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot (Score:2, Interesting)
I think they'd make more money by providing the books for the cost of download ($2 or $3 a e-book) and then offering exclusive paperbacks/hardbacks to people who want them at $20 or $30 a pop, or they can offer books that'll last forever for mroe. After a year, they begin throwing books up free to download with advertisements in the front and back for paperbacks. The good books will gross a lot of sales for paperbacks, as the demand for them is still there. If I had the money I'd certainly buy or print a number of books I have, and a few (scabbed wings of abadon, www.rantradio.ca for that one) I *REALLY* want a paperback of, not only because the book is so damn kewl, but so I can loan it to friends.
An electronic medium can is only as good as it's medium, but a good book can last years. Frankly, without DRM authors will be doomed, and with DRM people will be doomed since multinationals will seek to lisence everything. I can't really see any middleground right now. People really can't make money selling intangible objects like data because once data is created it can be copied at nearly no cost. They can make money at selling tangible objects, like paperbacks, however.
Caveat Emptor (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:American stupidity or political correctness ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, my point is that you are free to contribute to English or any other human language as much as you want but you must remember that you don't own any of them even if one of them happens to be named after your nationality.
Re:American stupidity or political correctness ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Under this analogy, wouldn't female dogging about deviations from an English "standard" correspond to female dogging about deviations from specifications such as Single UNIX [opengroup.org], LSB [linuxbase.org], or GNOME HIG [gnome.org]?
Piracy issues? Customize the products! (Score:4, Interesting)
My company ImageJester [imagejester.com] personalizes its e-books with the names and faces of people. Folks can even read the customized e-books online for free, and high-quality PDF files can be purchased and printed on home color printers.
This busines model works for picture books for children, but perhaps a customized technical manual for an operating system doesn't have quite the same appeal.
Matthew Clark
It might not pay that well due to scale but (Score:2, Interesting)
PDF publishing is popular not only with small houses, but with a couple established industry leaders (Monte Cook dual publishes his supplements for D&D).
There are several sites dedicated to selling these (I'm not going to pimp one here). But there is a battle between DRM and non-DRM now as a new site opened up recently with DRM.
There is some argument in the community about p2p distribution of these pdfs, because it is not legal. But people are not sure if it helps or hurts legitimate sales.
Anyway, it may be an interesting bell weather for other PDF publishers.