Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own by Bruce Judson (http://www.BruceJudson.com).
I've checked it out and I must say I like the format. The ads are not intrusive, or, at least, no more so than reading a blog. The publisher is protected because printing the entire book off the web wouldn't be worth the trouble or the time when a print version is available for about $10 from Amazon.
How much money will be generated by the advertising revenue is probably the most important question. Hopefully, HarperCollins and/or Bruce Judson will keep us posted on the results of this experiment.
Kent Newsome seems to think that people hate reading ads, and that the experiment will fail. I disagree. I think that the people who don't like ads will simply ignore them. They certainly don't interfere with the flow of content.
TDavid at Things That Make You Go Hmmm seems to have fully embraced this model, not only for non-fiction but for fiction as well, although his position seems to be premature and a little overly-enthusiastic to me.
The reality of ad-supported web-based publishing is probably somewhere inbetween the positions of those two bloggers. At any rate, I think it's too early to form an opinion that's anything more than a guess.
Damn, and here I went and spent $14 buck on it at the store. I'll make sure to get my next HarperCollins book via my favorite P2P app - just to even things out.
Posted by: Matt V | February 15, 2006 2:32 PM | Permalink to Comment