{"id":268046,"date":"2009-01-23T15:55:02","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T15:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/01\/23\/template-for-an-e-book-only-publishing-house\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:27:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:27:22","slug":"template-for-an-e-book-only-publishing-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/01\/23\/template-for-an-e-book-only-publishing-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Template for an e-Book Only Publishing House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theurbanelitist.com\/business-model-for-ebook-only-publishing-house\/1387\/\">Urban Elitist,<\/a> David Nygren has put together a description of what a e-book only publishing house <em>could<\/em> look like. I think David would be the first to admit that this model is neither fully complete or the only possible model, but it&#8217;s an interesting scheme, and one that ties into the world view that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,1873122,00.html\">Lev Grossman<\/a> recently put forth. <\/p>\n<p>Here are a few of David&#8217;s points:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>eBooks only (or mostly).<\/li>\n<li>The publisher accepts authors, not manuscripts.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, authors can publish whatever they feel is necessary: something book-length, something article-length, a short story, a paragraph, a sentence, a poem, a play, a script or a rant.  Fiction or non-fiction.  Finished or not finished.  The idea is not to create and package \u201cbooks\u201d but rather to create a forum and content delivery system for quality writing that will appeal to a certain type of reader.  Think of it almost like a hybrid book\/magazine publisher.<\/li>\n<li>Most content is free.<\/li>\n<li>Most revenue is ad-based.  The publisher and the author share revenue from ads on the author\u2019s home page and pages with the author\u2019s content.  If content is downloaded to a reading device, it still has the ads.  Use either a pay-per-click or pay-per-impression model.<\/li>\n<li>Readers can purchase subscriptions to a publisher or to an author.  When they do, they get ad-free content and perhaps some value-added content (if such a thing exists).  I know, this sounds like Salon.com circa 2004, but just try it and see.<\/li>\n<li>Update: Readers can also purchase ad-free content by the unit, rather than buy subscription.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s not really ebook only.  Readers who want to order print-on-demand cheap paperbacks or beautifully well-made hardcovers can do so and pay properly for the privilege.  If readers want something, the publisher should gladly take their money for it, at a profit (shared with the author).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Who knows how well this would work (one commenter complains about the ads, claiming that we already have too many in our lives; Wowio has been successful with this, but I wonder how appealing advertising in books like this would be to companies), but it&#8217;s an interesting project. And one that involves no bookstore component . . . something that scares me, if this model were ever the dominant model. But that might be more of my fault for clinging to old viewpoints. Perhaps what&#8217;s necessary is a corollary scheme laying out what a bookstore (or maybe &#8220;book center&#8221;?) could look like.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad_banner\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.openletterbooks.org\/subscribe\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/images\/131.jpg\" width=\"460\" height=\"105\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Urban Elitist, David Nygren has put together a description of what a e-book only publishing house could look like. I think David would be the first to admit that this model is neither fully complete or the only possible model, but it&#8217;s an interesting scheme, and one that ties into the world view [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1836,17686,7276,17696],"class_list":["post-268046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cwp","tag-david-nygren","tag-future-of-publishing","tag-urban-elitist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354806,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268046\/revisions\/354806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}