Excerpts from two posts from the always-wonderful-to-read PersonaNonData blog by Michael Cairns.
First, this one, published, September 17, 2007:
“Recently I mentioned the effort by DK (Penguin) that allows consumers to build their own travel guides using the DK content. Lonely Planet recently launched a program that allows consumers to download (in PDF) only the parts of travel guides they are most interested in. The option to download the entire guide exists, but in many cases a consumer only visits a part of a country and much of a country wide guide is irrelevant. This program solves this issue. “: PersonaNonData: Five Questions with Lonely Planet
And then, more recently, on February 11, 2008, this one, very much like what iTunes have done to music.
“The WSJ (via Reuters) is reporting that Random House will begin experimenting with the sale of chapters from their web site. The report suggests this is not a wholesale effort merely that they will ‘test selling individual chapters of a popular book to gauge reader demand.’”: PersonaNonData: Random House to Sell Chapters
So we may soon be in a time when a student, for example, can actually create her own textbook, or an instructor can customise a book for his students. When you consider the ability to embed other digital content and assessments products within this content, the opportunities for publishers multiply.
Before that, a quick look into iTunes, who perhaps started this trend of granular sales.
iTunes has proved that this strategy of granular sale works. Apple sold 67.4 million iPods as of Sept 06 with 1.5 billion songs sold via iTunes, however, according to a report by NYT, “The numbers suggest that iPods are not driving iTunes sales as much as early supporters may have expected.” (NYT Article Link and an interesting counter-argument.)
Coming back to the granular sale experiment now taken up by publishers, it will be interesting to watch the strategies they adopt to deliver this content. Unlike iTunes downloads, which is linked to a specific device, a chapter can be delivered in various formats. There is of course the print-on-demand option, the ubiquitous browser and a host of eBook readers and other mobile devices. All with good options for protecting content. Also, publishers, at least education publishers, will focus on institutional selling than retail. This allows greater flexibility and control for the publisher in selling granular and custom content.
The $2.99 chapter is definitely something to look forward to!
Filed under: Content, Digital Content, Publishing, eBook
Thanks so much for the positive comments and I hope I continue to be ‘always wonderful’
The idea of this level of control over my learning material is quite attractive to me as a student. But it would be interesting to know what education publishers feel about this. (Keeping aside the fact that revenue is a great equaliser) one wonders how comfortable publishers/authors would be about such customisation by a student. Are they ready for this? Is this something they would be forced to look at only if competition demands? Or would this be an assimilation of the changing learning needs? Just a thought.
[...] publishing side of the story, which, when you think about it, isn’t any different. (We did talk about this a while ago) In fact, it lends itself, more easily to the thought above. With most publishers setting up custom [...]
[...] publishing side of the story, which, when you think about it, isn’t any different. (We did talk about this a while ago) In fact, it lends itself, more easily to the thought above. With most publishers setting up custom [...]