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Startup Offers Pay-Per-Page E-Books
judgecorp writes "TotalBoox, a startup from Tel Aviv, plans to sell pay-as-you-read eBooks, charging for each page read. 'We are trying to rid the world from outdated, expensive ritual of buying a book before you read it,' says founder ~Yoarv Lorch, saying that readers can save money and move on if they start a best-seller on the spur of the moment and it turns out to be a turkey. But what about slow-burning classics that you have to 'get into'? What about reference books? And all the bits of a reference book that you don't actually need? The company has a beta app on Google Play for Android tablets."
I would be all over this. I have tons of reference ebooks that I only use a few chapters out of. If it's $40 for a 600 page book, I would gladly pay $10 for the 100 pages I would actually use even though the unit price (per page) would be higher. As it stands now, there are a lot of books I shy away from buying because a good chunk of it is irrelevant to me and the total purchase price is above my budget.
Or worse, they go out of business just before you can buy the last chapter of a TotalBoox exclusive.
....that just try to keep you turning pages just like soap operas. All the drama will be lost by an effectdriven style that resembles "keep tuned for the next page where he will get the girl....no really just read on a weee bit more."
Clearly the best way to consume choose your own adventure books. I mean nobody really picks every choice, right?
But Amazon lets you return ebooks!
Sometimes even when you didn't want to!
Sell the first N pages for $0.01 per page or whatever, but the last chapter is $2.00 per page.
I could see that working for mystery novels...
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Which is the opposite of the intent of US copyright (note this is not a US app/project), which is to, for a limited time (too long right now, but that's another discussion), secure the rights to the author so that eventually the work will promote progress. From the constitution:
In the US context, at least, this would work against such a thing. The way I see it, someone writes a book, eventually, that book should become part of the shared knowledge base, arts base, etc. I'm wary of a concept where a book is only available in part, where readers may never get the whole thing, and where e-readers... not exactly known for avoiding DRM and other such intellectual poison... contain the only (partial) copies.
A used book should be a treasure, something saved and valued and passed along. Electronic or not.
No sir, don't like it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Actually, he cut it short because it WAS working well
False. This is the Wired article wherein his assistant, Marsha Defillipo states:
By part four, only 46 percent of the people who downloaded the book paid for it, DeFillipo said.
As I always say when these stories come up, and routinely get modded down, people are lazy and cheap. If they can get something for nothing, they will, regardless if it hurts the person producing the work. They feel they are entitled to take someone else's work without compensation and will use every excuse and twist of language to justify their actions.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower