Internet Publishing Can Pay Off

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."

Comments

Music

[macdaddy]

I've often wondered why this very business method wouldn't work in the music business. Part of the problem, I think, is that music success nowadays is too dependant on radio. The whole indy process keeps those that can't afford to push bribe their way into radio stations from being heard. I think this is a business method that Apple should embrace with iTunes. The artist could pay $X dollars to sell their music on iTunes. The artist could then make 50% of the procedes. Apple could even charge to burn the music to CDs and mail it out. I think this would work very well.

eBooks are great.

[g-to-the-o-to-the-g]

I personally love ebooks. I have a $100 Palm m500, which has a backlight, so I can read without having to worry about the lighting or turning the page. Not to mention, I can have 50 books on a SD card. Why more people haven't caught on, I don't know. My favourite part is laying in bed and reading until I fall asleep (which is convenient, seeing as the thing powers itself off eventually, and I don't have to worry about the lights).

Aswell, I've heard other people criticize the whole ebook thing because they think its not as clear (to look at) or something. If you doubt me, you should just walk into a best buy or something and play with them yourself.

Because of the audience

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac users are used to paying for things. Software, shareware, etc. Linux users expect everything for free, and Windows users just pirate it.

Re:Doesn't Always Work

[bcrowell]

IIRC, sales were actually OK, but not as high as the target he'd set. It was a very atypical case anyway, because he was such a popular author. His books normally sold a lot of copies, and he expected to make a boatload of money off of each one. It's a whole different story for most authors. Most authors are only supplementing their income by writing books anyway.

It's also no secret that digital books can be a big failure if you choose the wrong model. Maybe his model (donate, or I'll stop writing chapters) was simply a bad one. Personally, I think it sounds like a huge hassle to have to pay the author periodically to read each chapter, after it's been so long that I've probably forgotten what happened in the last chapter.

Re:Yes, but

[lavaface]

I'm cheap. Well, poor. But I bought a Powerbook (with student loans : ) because video work on a PC blows. For many users a Mac is overpriced. But for folks that like a machine that offers a smooth user experience with well-designed apps bundled, it's a dream.

Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot

[Synesthesiatic]

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.

But it's been shown time and time again that the DRM is just big media's security blanket. CSS, FairPlay and Adobe's eBook DRM have all been cracked. Sure there's some technical knowledge required, but it only takes one person to share it on Kazaa before it's everywhere. Does this mean big media (the greedy middlemen, in most cases) is doomed? Possibly.

But that doesn't necessarily mean artists are left out in the cold. I know it might be hard to remember in the iTunes age, but I remember the first online music store worth giving a crap about was eMusic, because it was the only major player without major DRM restrictions (and it actually had none, since it used MP3s). We don't hear much about eMusic anymore, but the fact that it's still around says something: there's money to be made selling unprotected content. Maybe the multi-millionaire musicians are in danger, but as a whole I think artists might just come out on top by replacing the recording industry with an indie label and an online music store.

Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot

[Donny Smith]

>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 more.

If someone did that, I'd print hardbacks in China and sell them on eBay at $10 a pop.

Re:Good thing you've mentioned them on Slashdot

[huchida]

Now these books will appear on every god damn P2P network out there.

With titles like "Take Control of Email with Apple Mail" and "Take Control of What's New in Entourage 2004", I seriously doubt there're many P2P users interested in the titles. If they can figure out how to access the networks in OSX (which takes a bit more savviness than downloading Kazaa for Windows) they probably have enough knowledge to "master" their e-mail programs. (Who's using Entourage anymore, anyway? I didn't know they even updated it!)

Anyone else think these books are overpriced, considering the low-level topics? Ten dollars for an electronic pamphlet on how to share files in Panther? I just bought a three hundred page (real) book on DVD Studio Pro for twenty!