Free E-Books, With a Catch — Advertising

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.

Comments

Great.

[ScrewMaster]

So, is the idea to turn novels, anthologies and reference works into magazines?

Brilliant!

Re:Great.

[TheWanderingHermit]

Oh, so you've read the fine print in the Obamacare packages?

Actually, ads in ebooks is a natural progression, it's just returning to how literature used to be published. A lot of literary works have been published or serialized and published in magazines supported by ads.

Re:DO NOT WANT!

[molnarcs]

Exactly my thoughts here - when it comes to price. I wrote that review specifically for Vietnamese students (tried to simplify the language as well as the issues I touch upon). The prices set by the publishers for the digital versions is just fucking ridiculous. The average salary around here is $300/month, but even if that was not the case, 13-15$ for a shitty novel by Danielle Steel? WTF?? Give me out of copyright classics for $1 (already freely available, but I would pay for the convenience of a one stop shop), $2-3 for contemporaries, $5 at most for real gems - and I wouldn't bother with piracy. Of course I know the reason for these (probably don't want to compete with their own established traditional distribution chains, ie dead tree book business), but that's besides the point.

Also, the stuff I wrote about e-ink vs. LCD - I know that many would find no difference between the two technologies, in other words, some people can read just fine on an LCD. I'm not one of them. For me, e-ink is far more pleasant to look at. Moreover, I started to go out for reading to breath a bit of fresh air and just be outside - sitting on the terrace of a cafe, in a park, on the beach beneath a shade... and that's where e-ink readers really shine and LCDs, including the iPAD, sucks balls. Indoors, in dim light/no light LCDs have an advantage, but I still find it better to use my Sony Reader with a lamp than reading on a screen with backlight.

How about free books?

[Dyinobal]

I know I found Robin Hobb's Assassin's apprentice and it's subsequent trilogies after it was put up for free on the publishers website. So for giving me 1 free book I bought 8 more and am still reading her latest stuff to come out since then. If I'd not of seen that free book I'd of never bought the rest.

Reviving an old concept

[Reziac]

You young whippersnappers wouldn't remember this, but back in the Olden Days most deadtree books contained advertising. Paperbacks typically had a glossy insert in the middle (most often a cigarette ad), and hardbacks had several pages of ads in the back, usually something at least vaguely relevant to the book's content, and also sometimes ads for other books (and not only from that book's publisher).

It occurs to me that if ads were placed at the end of the ebook (much as ads in hardbacks used to be at the back of the book) there's incentive to improve content, to get the average reader to finish the book and see the ads.

Re:Just what we need

[digitig]

When I read the Superman comics back in the 60s the ads were for x-ray glasses and muscle building courses. So what's new?