Printing Money At The Speed Of Light

The web has suffered from the same drawbacks which beset multimedia publishing in its infancy:

Namely, a lack of business direction-- and, the hi-jacking of business operations by technologists without any business knowledge. It is important that publishers identify the product they are selling and to whom they are selling it, the market demand and its suitability for on-line delivery.

Electronic goods, mostly, consist of:

· electronic journals, magazines and newspapers
· electronic books (e-books)
· multimedia CD-ROM
· software
· computer games
· spreadsheets and formulas
· music (MP3's, etc)
· on-line databases

The products most suited to electronic commerce are on-line databases and electronic journals, music, magazines and newspapers … but the real commercial success of ePublishing may ultimately include any file that can be stored electronically- as these can be accessed, paid for and delivered directly to the users PC.

We mentioned startup, Zden.com. The European Internet company provides digitally (and not so digitally) creative and productive people with a platform to sell and expose their original content/work in files (digital formats) and, at the same time, provides buyers of digital copyrighted material with a large catalogue of original content/work in files (digital formats).

What kind of files? Any and all of them: Jpeg, mp3, avi, doc, txt, xls, ppt, gif, … Zden is a "marketplace to go shopping for digital stuff" according to their web site - music, videos, flash animations, text, spreadsheets... every kind of digital format can be purchased/sold. As they say, "It is like the open market you visit on weekends. Instead of vegetables, meat and fruits, Zden will have files (content in digital format). And instead of being just on weekends, it' s on every second..."

A model for the future of publishing? Maybe. An eBay for digital content? Or just another MightWords who hasn't learned their lesson yet?

The purchase of electronic books is more problematic as we mentioned. Besides the security and copyright issues there are social and cultural issues involved in the process of selecting and consuming books.

There's also a perceived value issue that needs to be addressed. For example, other digital goods such as software for your computer has a high perceived value because of what it will do for the buyer. It's a plug 'n play product- buy it, load it and it does what it's supposed to do (hopefully) without any further intervention.

E-books, on the other hand, are 'content' (digital 1's and 0's) that don't do anything except sit on your hard drive. Not only don't they do anything, but the end-user actually has to exert effort to use it- they have to read it get the intended benefits.
Then there are also those quality control issues. Quality control will become a primary issue as e-book buyer sophistication increases.

There are opportunities for selling e-books and e-content utilizing strategies, that right now, may seem radical or unusual. We are in the very early stages of an entirely new industry - there are no industry "norms". That's what makes it exciting and potentially the most profitable chapter to be written in Internet history.

Current Best ePublishing Practices

The Internet presents a mode of delivery which may ultimately challenge traditional publishing. If you believe Patrick Ames, Founder of Books Virtual Corporation (
http://bookvirtual.com/), "…society is moving whole-heartedly into the digital domain, on multiple levels, and we cannot leave without our books" (Towards A Digital Book Renaissance, Ames, p 4).

Traditional publishers have mostly utilized the web as a marketing tool and not as a method of distribution and selling.
Investment has been in developing web sites as an advertising tool and not in the technologies and skills required for payment of digital goods and delivery.

Electronic publishing has been used to compliment rather then replace traditional print products. However the growing interest in on-line media and the changing role of the end-user means electronic publishers, e-content developers and entrepreneurs have to address their on-line and electronic publishing strategy and change their models if they want to profit from this area of e-commerce.

According to Digitz.com (
http://www.digitz.com) in Charleston, SC electronic publishers are well advised to consider formatting their work for print as well as for online distribution. Digitz converts current PDF E-book titles to a Print On Demand (POD) format. This means that if you are selling E-books, you can now add print on demand capabilities to your site by simply adding a link to a new product.

When a customer orders a print on demand (POD) title from a site, the owner simply processes the order and then places an order at Digitz.net's customized ordering page. When they receive the order they print the book and ship it directly to you or your customer from a file stored on their server. The price of their services are affordable for even the smallest of publishers- starting (at the time of this writing) at just $99 per title for set-up and per book costs of about $6.50 for a 200 page book. One of the biggest advantages to this system is you can order one book at a time.

Digitz.net considers itself the Internet's first true "one at a time" on-demand book printer and fulfillment operation. Others are sure to follow.

Traditional publishers may not be able to keep pace with this kind of innovation. Opportunities will grow exponentially for electronic publishers, self-published authors, content developers and entrepreneurs.

At one time there were no publishing houses. There were only printers and all authors were, by necessity, "self-published".

Electronic commerce offers benefits to both the self-published author and the consumer. The more entrepreneurial authors/publishers can develop new and customized products, as well as creating new markets. They are able to create new business, reduce costs, increase competition and generate additional profit streams. The consumer benefits from increased choice, ease of access and a better standard of service.

There are practices being employed in the digital marketplace that can serve as models for electronic publishing. As I've mentioned, we are still very early in the development of business models. Some of the following companies and self-publishers have made successfully transitions from offline content sales to online and some are taking advantage of the electronic marketplace as a new form of content sales and distribution.

Most users subscribe (for a fee or free) to on-line news-feeds and electronic magazines or ezines. One of the winners in online subscription business is The Wall Street Journal online (
http://www.wsj.com/). For an annual fee you get current WSJ news and an extensive archives collection. There are lots of independent publishers how do exceptionally well online selling subscription and digital information products online. We'll discuss a few of them below. But let's continue to look at some offline-to-online successes:

Dialog (
http://www.dialog.com), US Search (http://www.ussearch.com/) and several other database gateways charge per search, record or amount of information downloaded in bytes. These are commercial organizations with private and public databases or reference libraries. They were already established brands, offline, before turning their attention online.

Harvard Business Publishing (
http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/) is tackling this problem of electronic publishing by offering it's comprehensive archives of articles from the Harvard Business Review online. Most content on the site is available in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). The only exclusions are the Business Case Studies which are purchased online but delivered via the U.S. mail.

HBS publishing is profitable, but they have an established off-line brand that they are successfully marketing online.
The one successful independent publisher that you could spend the next several weeks studying is Monique Harris. Monique is an information publisher whose rags to riches story is well known in Internet marketing circles.

Monique has been online since 1996 marketing her self-published material. She co-authored Make Your Site Sell with Dr. Ken Evoy released in March 2000. She has products that include, How To Successfully Sell Information Products Online, The Online Infoseller Jump Start Kit, The Information Marketers Internet Mastery Program, and How To Make $100,000 A Year Promoting and Selling Market Research Reports Online. She is literally a one-woman information publishing powerhouse!

Her Digital Publishing and Promotion newsletter (http://www.sellyourbrainfood.com) is required reading for electronic publishers.

Another very successful digital publisher online is Harmony Major. Harmony has been marketing online since 1998, and is the author of Simply, eBusiness, an e-business and marketing startup guide, and Yahoo! Secrets, a guide to getting a #1 listing on Yahoo.

Harmony's articles have been published in several major online publications, including Active Internet Marketing (A.I.M.), DEMC, Internet Marketing Challenge (IMC), and others. She designs and maintains a growing network of online business and marketing websites, which include:

Simply, eBusiness (
http://SimplyeBusiness.net)
Yahoo! Secrets (
http://YahooSecrets.com)
ExpertOnEbiz.com (
http://ExpertOnEbiz.com)
Home-Based Heaven ONLINE (
http://HomeBasedHeaven.com)
Site SELLING Power (
http://SiteSellingPower.com)

Through hard work, perseverance and long hours, Harmony was able to go full-time (at the tender age of 20) with her e-business after only one year online. This is even more remarkable considering she was homeless at the age of 6. To read a compelling story about the obstacles Harmony had to overcome when starting her business, go to:
http://simplyebusiness.net/ and scroll to "A Story Destined to Change Your Life." It really is worth a visit.

For the start-up e-publisher or e-content marketer there are three ways of approaching the problem of using electronic commerce technology.

First, electronic publishers can allow customers the option of paying for one-off items without incurring subscription charges. By allowing access via the internet, providers could allow individuals to purchase an electronic product using credit or debit card technology or by allowing them to set up individual accounts using a suitable model. This model is suitable for e-books, reports, music, etc.

The second method would enable the consumer to go straight to the creator of the product (using the publisher as the 'gateway') and make the purchase in the same way. By doing so the storage, delivery and distribution elements of the information chain are eliminated.

The third way involves measuring the 'stream' of data consumed by the end-user. Sometimes called the Taxi Cab model the user is billed from the moment they click on a specific link (the meter), and the measurement is based on bytes downloaded not time. Video on demand and some adult content sites use this model.

Content Exchange (
http://www.content-exchange.com/) is a marketplace for content developers and electronic publishers. According to their site, "The rapid growth of the Internet is opening up fantastic and lucrative new markets for all kinds of content professionals (writers, editors, photographers, and so on). Whole new marketplaces for their work are appearing. Publishers, companies, and organizations of all stripes are eager to find high-quality content for their Web sites, intranets, e-mail publications, and other online venues. Content Exchange™ is a marketplace that brings content professionals ("talent") together with online publishers ("venues")."

Content-Exchange is setting up a database of content providers and content users. In the meantime they are using paid classified ads to generate revenue and news articles to draw interest in the site.

You can set up your own database to publish on the web without any programming knowledge by using eCriteria (
http://204.1.220.85/eCriteria/) to create your own Web database. Without any database or programming experience you can create and manage Web databases that put your data live on the Web. Users can search your content and download anything on your site. You can even put your data in a secure area of your web site for paid subscribers.

MightyWords
(http://mightywords.com/) is one the first native publishers on the Internet. They host content from self-publishers and provide an EC gateway. But there's a selection process. They also expect their "published" authors to share a large part of the responsibility for marketing their own titles.

In the same class, but with a fraction of the number of titles, is Intellectua (
http://www.intellectua.com/). Intellectua says that products are only as good as the people behind them, "Which explains why we have chosen to only publish the work and words of authors worth reading and learning from. People with the knowledge and experience to give you the business and technical advice that you can bank on." Their titles include .COMstruction- The Basics, How To Install CGI Programs, and Links To Free Publicity On The Internet. You can purchase the entire content or, using their knowledge al a cartTM purchasing option allows you to purchase individual chapters of the book. Their goals are modest- 100 titles on their site by the end of their first year in business.

Booklocker (
http://www.booklocker.com/) is another publisher of e-books, similar to MightyWords, but again, with fewer titles. They also have a strict criteria for acceptance. They've been around since March 1999 and have recently expanded to include print-on-demand (POD) in addition to electronic delivery of books. Like some online publishers, they limit submissions and are not accepting creative writing, children's books and poetry. Non-fiction, especially business and finance and 'how-to', is prevalent on the site. Prices for e-books at Booklocker range from $3.95 to $149 (for a course in creativity titled AWAITING THE KISS: A Study in Creativity).

In contrast to the publishers above, eMarketer (
http://emarketer.com/), and Forrester Research (http://forrester.com/) successfully publish staff authored electronic research reports at the higher end of the market ($200-$500 each). EMarketer changed from an annual subscription-based model because it was unprofitable before publishing their research reports. AllNetResearch (http://allnetresearch.internet.com/) markets the research reports published by others around the net. If you publish research reports you can sell your content on their site which is part of the Internet.com network.


Entire Contents © Copyright 2001 by David Vallieres. All rights reserved.
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