- Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath – Buy chapters – $2.99 a chapter = $22 for a DRM’d ebook which is on sale via Amazon for $16.50 in hardback. Fail.
- Publisher Tests Selling by the Chapter [WSJ.com] – Random House US to sell chapters at $2.99 each, in vile Adobe Digital Editions format. Not sure I understand why. More industry flailing.
- Speed writing [Guardian] – French professor invents machine to write books and feed them to Amazon. Literary spam is here.
- Better Than Free – Kevin Kelly on the values that can make ‘free’ media worth something. Read.
Stop Press for February 11th
February 12, 2008
Selling books by chapters: There are a few good reasons to do that.
Technical books: I want the chapter from this book on programming and that one from this other, etc. Make your own technical book.
Novels: At school/university, you have to study text of some authors in litterature or philosophy. And you need only the excerpt of some opus and not necessary everything.
Travel Books: I don’t want everything about this country, but just this city or this province. My trip goes through a few cities, I want to be able to compile all my destination, but not everything about each countries.
Comment by karl — February 12, 2008 @ 11:38 am
Yeah, I was a bit harsh on them. You are right about technical books and travel books, and possibly some non-fiction, but I do not agree about students reading novels (they should study the whole thing!) – or in this instance. And I still have an issue with the price.
Comment by James Bridle — February 12, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Yes the price is too high. :)
As for the students they should study the whole thing, well, they *should* indeed, but do they. ;) Plus the many times when the teacher is photocopying a part of a book, better to have an official sold copy. :)
Comment by karl — February 12, 2008 @ 11:29 pm