Book People Archive

Re: Sustaining on-line book sites (re: Named Word and copyright)

Um, actually, I say advertising rates have plummeted 99 percent for most
book types -- in comparison with the glory days of 1999. I've seriously
considered pulling the banner ads from my site, which 80% of the time
just advertise my advertisers, only thing that prevented me from doing
that is the realization of how, in the future, it would be extremely
difficult to return those banners should the market rally.

I'd go a little further and say that the amazon.com sponsor me thing is
already over--mostly because of a couple of emails I sent making fun of
Mickey Kaus, and the rather perturbed tone he took when finally replying.
Even more interesting, there's suddenly no competition among the big, big
webhosting companies, because, well, OK, you might switch your business
over to efreeservers.com (don't -- think they used to be another company
with a really, really bad rep), but three months later when efreeservers
obeys the McNealey (ph) rule, you'll be back at verio or exodus or whoever.

That said --and this might be bad form, akin to telling suddenly unemployed
health care workers about the great year you had on the market because you
put such a fortune into NGH at 7--I've actually been in the black for six
months now, even counting some software I've paid for and not yet used.

There are a couple of edges I have-- I'm running a Cobalt Raq-3, which is
the cheapest you can find now unless somebody's still offering a Cobalt
Raq-2-- and as a network administrator inside an Anglo-Dutch publishing
conglomerate, I've been able to send some bizness the way of my ISP--
no kickbacks or anything, they had the best deal and I mostly dug their
reliability; in one case I fought for them because the manager guy wanted
to send the contract to Fred's ISP out in Cali rather than, you know,
Virginia--but, uh, nobody's said anything to me (or charged me anything)
despite me being 30 gigs of transfer over my limi -- will be worse this
month, Gemstar just shut down the rocket-library because, well, Powells
wants to sell Wuthering Heights in ebook form.

However, even if I was paying full price for bandwith, I'd still be doing
OK, based entirely on a couple of text-based links: pushed some Franklin
eBookmans when those things came available; sell a few collections of
books on CD-Rom in formats nobody else uses; sell two of my books as
shareware -- which might be on a par w/ the charity thing, but I am at
least getting read.  That, and maybe 70-80 a month from my two advertisers
(less than i made a year ago w/ 1/20th the page views) is more than enough
for the $265 a month I pay for a dedicated Raq-3, and the extra $50 for
my DSL (which I think I'd have anyway).  Plus even if I didn't make a dime,
I've made myself real employable in a high-tech area... and tomorrow will
be having a beer poured by someone who once ranked way ahead of me on
the content side (reverse snobbery is its own reward).

There's hope for the future: Advertising actually bottomed in Feb and
has been inching steadily since, the new advertisers have names like
Ford, Visa-Visa not Aria Visa, GM, McDonald's I've seen.  And as other
sites die, or my traffic increases, things can only get better.
I was and am planning to be a commercial ebook publisher... was seriously
thinking about spending some money to really integrate my site w/
digitalgoods.com... and boy am I glad I didn't do so.  Maybe I'll go
w/ Overdrive.com, but they keep dropping their prices, and since Adobe
didn't rescue dgds, I ain't sure Mr. Softie will come through on OD.

Long-term hosting gets easier, if only because they really are rolling
out cheap fiber -- I mean, 100mbps per second on a dedicated line
for as low as $1k a month, and if, you know, it's still only 100 k ebook
readers sold next Christmas, I can always exchange technical skills
w/ one of the area biotech co's (live in Rockville, MD) that needs
serious bandwith once every three months for video conferencing, set
up a low-end Proliant or something (they're free and I already have
a switch).  

I guess the one thing I'd have to fear is webmaster burnout-- but hey,
I've only now started my site to fill the void in my life that's been
there ever since I lost the opportunity to transcribe the uh-huhs and
Mm-hmms of NPR's Ira Flatow, Joe Palca, and Noah Adams when he hit his
stride, besides which I'm from Baltimore, and the one thing we're really
good at is pounding away at something until we get what we want or the
opposition collapses (CC Ravens, Rahman, etc.)

P.S. if anybody's looking to get help from big publishing you might
point out that, w/ the obvious exception of sites like Mary Ockerboom's,
the majority of your traffic is male  (and showing explosive growth),
so if they (big publishing), for some reason, would like to reach that
audience, well, guess the only way it's gonna happen.

Or you could just let publishers figure it out on their own ^_^ if you
believe there will be something left of them

PSS: To Mr. Ockerbloom-- I added the John Silence stories and am taking
a break now from finishing up The Jewel of Seven Stars
John Silence would be (and I can't fix the misspelled title tonight --
Psychical --oi!) 

  http://www.blackmask.com/Gothic_Tales/Algernon_Blackwood/John_Silence

while Stoker's Mummy book (people will want that mummy) is at

  http://www.blackmask.com/Gothic_Tales/Bram_Stoker

-- in every format, of course.  Keeping w/ the Mummy theme, I think I
mentioned to somebody that I've also got Theophile Gualtier's "One of
Cleopatra's Nights" at

  http://www.blackmask.com/Gothic_Tales/Theophile_Gautier/ 



>I'd also like to ask folks on the list, especially those who maintain
>sites of their own, about what can be done to help sustain free on-line
>book projects.  There's always been a cost involved in providing "free"
>books to people, and it's been paid for in many different ways.  Public
>libraries can use local taxpayer funds to supply free access to books
>to the community, for instance.  On-line, some sites are sponsored or
>hosted by nonprofit institutions (such as universities) who are interested
>in the content, or who provide space to members of their community.
>Others are put up through commercial providers, who ultimately
>hope to make money through ads or premium services.  Still others are paid
>for out of the provider's own pocketbook.  Some try to support themselves
>through side businesses (such as the sales of print copies of books),
>or through asking users for donations.  (Public broadcasters have
>gotten particularly skillful at that, though I don't expect that their
>technique of interrupting one's programming every few months with a pledge
>drive will translate well to the Web, even if people get a nifty
>tote bag for their donation.  But maybe I'm wrong about that.)
>
>All of these techniques have their pros and cons, and some of them
>are less stable than others.  (For instance, the rates for web site ads
>have plummeted in the last year, by as much as a factor of 10, so I'm
>therefore concerned about the long-term future of sites that were depending
>on them. Will nbci.com still be here by the end of the year, for instance?)
>Some sites have reported success with selling print copies, like Baen and
>National Academy Press, but I don't know how well this does in all cases--
>I know that Naked Word has been offering that as well, and I infer from
>Jim's note that it hasn't been enough to fund the site on its own.
>Most of the "independent" projects that I'm aware of, those that don't
>have full university or corporate sponsorship, require some level
>of sacrifice from the people that run them.  I very appreciate the
>work that these people do to give these books to the world, and I hope
>that you aren't burning yourselves out doing it.  I also hope that those
>who read and enjoy these books can help keep these books going and
>staying on-line.  
>
>So, what are ways that we can make this happen?  What do folks
>running these projects need most, what have you tried doing to
>sustain your operations, and what's worked and what hasn't?  On
>the other side of things, how would readers like to be able to help
>out with these projects, and what could be done to make it easier to
>offer and use this help?
>
>Thanks,
>
>  John Mark Ockerbloom