So far, most news organizations have eyed e-readers—from the Kindle to the iPad—mainly as distribution channels for periodical subscriptions. But from a usability perspective, this generally is a clumsy match. E-book reader devices and apps are best at displaying, well, e-books. Learning how to roll with this could unlock new revenue opportunities for news orgs.
How might this work? A newspaper that has published several articles on a popular topic (such as a high-profile crime, a natural disaster, or a vibrant music and art scene) could repackage those articles as an e-book. Or if you regularly publish recipes, lifestyle or how-to features, or other “evergreen” content, it might sell in e-book form. And the work of a popular columnist, critic, or editorial cartoonist might also make a good e-book.
For example, Mark Scott Nash, a longtime outdoors writer for the Boulder, Colo. Daily Camera, recently published The Insolent Guide to Northern Colorado Mountains—an e-book that not only includes maps, color photos, and hiking guides, but also “a compilation of essays expressing why we are addicted to the primordial mountain wilderness experience.” It sells for $9.99 in most e-bookstores.
An e-book can also be a handy way to present the documents supporting a big enterprise reporting project. That’s what the New York Times did with its first-ever e-book, published earlier this year: Open Secrets: Wikileaks, War, and American Diplomacy. Even though this content is available for free online, people are buying it for about $6 online—for the added convenience, portability, and presentation benefits an e-book offers.
I spoke with Dan Pacheco, founder and CEO of Bookbrewer.com, as he was attending Book Expo America in New York City. Bookbrewer evolved from Printcasting, an early Knight News Challenge winner—and it’s carving out a viable niche in the world of digital publishing.
Bookbrewer is a service that allows you to take any text or image content (from an RSS feed, files, or that you can copy and paste) and repackage it in popular e-book formats (mobi and epub), to make it compatible with all popular e-reader devices and apps. You can then create a cover, add front and back matter, and put it on the market. These e-books can be sold through any of the popular digital bookstores (Kindle, Nook, iBook, etc.), or directly by the author/publisher.
- Have a good story flow. Organize your content in a way that flows well, and add bridging text or context where necessary. If you’re packaging articles or columns, group them thematically or chronologically, whichever is more relevant to the topic.
- Attractive cover design. This is a must. “People really DO judge a book by its cover. If you don’t take your e-book seriously, no one will buy it,” said Pacheco. One easy strategy for a good cover: Go to iStockPhoto, pay $5 for a good relevant image. Then put your title and author name/news brand on it—large. “Thumbnails for e-books are super small, so your title needs to be twice as big as on a printed bookcover.”
- Promotion and visibility. This is where news organizations have a major advantage over e-book publishers. “Most book publicists would kill to have coverage run in newspapers as soon as their book hits the market. If you are the newspaper, that’s no problem,” said Pacheco. He also advises marketing e-books through social media and other channels that most news organizations are probably already using.
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20110526_e-books_emerging_revenue_option_for_news_publishers
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