Wowio offers free books as pdfs. There's no DRM, yet each pdf is digitally marked with a serial number traceable to your account (no anonymous or untraceable accounts are allowed). If you are caught distributing Wowio books, your account is terminated and you may be prosecuted.
I signed up and downloaded H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. It looks awesome: the illustrations look fantastic, there are explanatory historical footnotes, and the last pages of the book link to digitized audio of the radio broadcast that caused panic and hysteria back in 1938. Wowio has added value to this free book, and I couldn't even find any ads embedded. From a publishing perspective, I'm still skeptical:
1. It's still an ebook. I told my wife I'd signed us up for free ebooks. She wrinkled her nose and said, "But I don't want to read a book on a computer.". I suppose I could print out the book and pay just cost of paper and toner, but I've read books that way and wrestling unbound pages is no fun, not to mention the papercuts.
2. Depending on the ad format, books become long magazines. Will readers accept this? Maybe. Will book publishers? Only if they must, I suspect.
3. Wowio asked for demographic and personal info during registration. Though I found their survey to be amateurish, I'm now theoretically segmentable. But who wants to advertise in a book? I mean the question in two ways: does anyone want to advertise in a book? What companies would advertise in H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds? As a marketer and print ad buyer, I'm interested in segmenting, and I'm not sure companies like Ovaltine and Lifebuoy Soap are advertising much these days. Let's say your book is about training for bike racing. Does Wowio know how to sell ads in a bike racing training book to Trek or Pearl Izumi? What if Wowio simply sells ad runs across its entire product offering: say any book downloaded in March 2008 has a Ford Motor Company ad in it (those same books downloaded in April 2008 might have a new set of ads embedded – a clever concept). Will readers tolerate those ads? Will niche publishers be willing to open their books to non-niche advertisers? I'm skeptical.
4. You still have to get caught. Does Wowio, a web startup founded in 2006, really have the time and funds to catch violators and enforce their TOS by suing the worst violators?
5. I downloaded War of the Worlds about three weeks ago, and I haven’t read a single page yet.
Still, I’m being Chicken Little. Publishers are barely beginning with ebooks. Surely there’s time to figure out how to make money with it. Next up: some thoughts on how to go digital.
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