Publishers Realizing There's Revenue In Selling Ebooks Of Old Content... Even If It's Available For Free

from the you-can-compete-with-free dept

Wed, Oct 12th 2011 11:12pm — Mike Masnick

We've been explaining for years that you absolutely can compete with free, and in the last few months a bunch of news publications have figured out an interesting strategy that's working surprisingly well: taking old content from their magazines/newspapers/blogs/etc. and repackaging them as cheap ebooks. And, even though much of that content is available already for free, the convenient package combined with the low price (and the rapid spread of tablets and ebook readers) seems to just hit the sweet spot that makes people willing to pay. We'd actually been planning to do something similar ourselves with some of our past content, just as an experiment, and still plan to do so soon, but it's great to see how well it seems to be working for a variety of publications. It's not a paywall since all the content is available for free, but it is about giving people a reason to buy.

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Filed Under: business models, ebooks, journalism

12 Comments

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jakerome (profile), 13 Oct 2011 @ 12:08am

A certain irony...
The GigaOm article is titled, "Planning a paywall? Maybe you should sell some e-books instead"

Then below the article are links to more stories... stuck behind the GigaOm paywall.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Maybe they should take their own advice?
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Robert Freetard, 13 Oct 2011 @ 12:51am

People will pay for...
Convenience,

Context,

Intelligent linking, IE: Connections they would have otherwise missed

Filtering,

Good, useful aggregating.

At least I will. Even if the source material is as free as crtl-c/ctrl-v those features, even if only fairly well implemented are enough to get me to pay money for what I could get for free.
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- abc gum, 13 Oct 2011 @ 4:59am
  
  Re: People will pay for...
  Maybe we all have paid too much already and it is time for market correction. Out with the old and in the new, etc.
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mike allen (profile), 13 Oct 2011 @ 2:16am

having a hard copy (a book) can be useful that is why it works.
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- abc gum, 13 Oct 2011 @ 5:02am
  
  Re:
  "having a hard copy (a book) can be useful that is why it works."
  
  And the seller would experience some level of difficulty retrieving it after being told they lacked the rights to sell it.
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Butcherer79 (profile), 13 Oct 2011 @ 4:28am

Sounds to me like people will pay to be lazy, and isn't that how most industries are?
All I need to do now is find a very easy way of doing something that people don't normally like or can be bothered to do and sell it to them at a (not so)reasonable price...
If only there was a 'thinking machine' available to help me
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- abc gum, 13 Oct 2011 @ 5:04am
  
  Re:
  "All I need to do now is find a very easy way of doing something that people don't normally like or can be bothered to do and sell it to them at a (not so)reasonable price... "
  
  psssst ... self cleaning toilet.
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mdavidthomson, 13 Oct 2011 @ 4:52am

Kevin Kelly Generatives
I love Kevin Kelly's 8 generative column. And this is clearly Generative #8: Findability. http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php

I keep going back to that article for business model ideas (along with Mike's general theory on the economics of free post). It really sums it up very well, if you've read Mike and Kevin Kelly, none of these things look surprising at all, it just makes sense.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 13 Oct 2011 @ 7:25am

Any newspaper can collect together all the articles related to a specific event and if I'm interested in that event I'd pay $5-$10 for the book. It's an awesome way to do local history. Old news becomes valuable again when it gets old enough.

All I've ever seen from my local paper is expensive, hardcover vanity books with articles by a single writer that just strokes their ego.

Our paper's much more interested in locking all it's content away in archives hoping you'll pay $2 just to read one article.
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shawnhcorey (profile), 13 Oct 2011 @ 7:51am

Baen Free Library has been doing this for years. Jim Baen firmly believed offering free ebook downloads of popular books increased sales of real books.

See http://www.baen.com/library/
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Oct 2011 @ 11:30am

TECHDIRT - YES PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CONTENT! I HAVE BEEN WONDERING IF THIS IS AVAILABLE.
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Nikky, 10 Nov 2011 @ 5:32am

Sounds familiar,are they going to collect the related articles before publishing?
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