Re: Economics of dead tree (was: Re: A Radical Thesis)

From: Mike Holderness <mch[_at_]cix.compulink.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 96 00:44 BST-1

John Lederer <johnl[_at_]ibm.net> wrote:
>
> I wrote:
> > I emphasise that these are physicists' order-of-magnitude
> > numbers, not accountants' integers. And I am aware of many
> > complicating factors which I don't have time to write,
> > and you don't have time right now to read.
>
> Mike,
>
> I very much appreciate your taking the time to make this first
> order approximation.
>
> What I find interesting is that the $.80 per reader is well with
> the range of what might be able to support with advertising and/or
> selling the identification of the reader's interest (i.e. selling
> his name), depending on the specificity of the identification.

That raises some interesting questions, which will be answered only by market experiment. But, as author, I still rent value to you as publisher, which still depends on the number of accesses. So I clearly need clauses in my contract with you which specify how your *total* return-per-hit (direct charge, if any, plus advertising/marketing income) is calculated, so I can get my due share of it.  

> But I suspect that books are likely to be quickly supplanted by
> electronic media.

That I doubt. TV didn't replace radio, but it changed the shape of the niche it lives in. Ditto TV, movies; writing, oral culture.

> A magazine or article might be more likely--
> particulalry something continuously updated.

Dickens comes irresistibly to mind: books published "on the fly" in episodes... and the exception to the rule that fiction by journalists is god-awful!

Mike  

Mike Holderness
<mch[_at_]cix.compulink.co.uk> Received on Wed Apr 24 1996 - 23:43:21 GMT

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