Free E-Books, With a Catch — Advertising 194
Velcroman1 writes "Barnes & Noble may kick off a fresh price war today for digital book readers, with its new Nook news. But the real news in digital publishing is a novel approach to the e-books themselves: Free books — with advertising. The basic idea is to offer publishers another way to reach readers and to give readers the chance to try more books — books that perhaps they wouldn't normally peruse if they had to pay more for them. Initially, Wowio specialized in offering digital versions of comic books and graphic novels, usually formatted as Adobe PDFs. So it was a natural step for the company to offer graphic ads that are inserted in e-books. 'We think we're creating a broader audience for some of these titles,' Wowio's CEO Brian Altounian told me. 'I think folks are going to download more books because they're saving the costs' of having to drive to the store or pay more for them. Would ads stop you from reading?" The new color Nook goes for $249, and comes with a browser, games, Quickoffice, streaming music via Pandora, and an SDK; reader itwbennett links to an analysis of how well it stacks up as a tablet.
oh boy (Score:4, Funny)
"It was a dark and stormy night.....in beautiful downtown Vegas!"
Re:Did the editors even READ the article? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:oh boy (Score:2, Funny)
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better McDonald's... I'm loving it!
Re:Let me be the first to quote John Gruber (Score:1, Funny)
And let you be the last, dear god please make it stop
Re:Great. (Score:1, Funny)
Beg to differ, Sir - ads in ebooks are most definitely not a natural progression (obviously). Otherwise, why would Wowio (stoopid *** name as well) be in process of being granted a "very broad patent" (link in summary above) for such?
You, Sir, are merely jealous that you never discovered this groundbreaking text+ad = Wowio patent license fee invention.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:meh (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great. (Score:3, Funny)
Sure. Ask your Mom.