There have been a number of eBooks released in 2011 by newspapers and magazine periodicals and stories are suggesting this might be their salvation, or at least a way to leverage their “backlist” of articles. This is not necessarily a new idea, newspaper and magazine writers have been publishing books for years.The difficulty—and this applies to the publisher of any eBook—is establishing sufficient value from the perspective of the buyer. Is your product is worth the investment of the reader’s money, and their time to read it?
To help answer that I assembled a progress report on some of the more high-profile and early experiments in this regard. A few observations follow the table below and I look forward to revisiting this in the months ahead.
$per Byte Rank | Publisher/Book | Price | KB | Reviews | Ave | Likes | Date Published |
| 1 | The Forum-Microsoft in Fargo | $0.99 | 967 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 5/31/2011 |
| 2 | New York Times-Open Secrets | $5.59 | 5111 | 5 | 2.5 | 0 | 1/24/2011 |
| 3 | Vanity Fair-Rupert Murdoch | $3.99 | 2572 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 7/27/2011 |
| 4 | The New Yorker-After 9/11 | $7.99 | 4769 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 8/18/2011 |
| 5 | Boston Globe-The Bulger Mystique | $2.99 | 1068 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 6/29/2011 |
| 6 | Boston Globe-Whitey and the FBI | $2.99 | 972 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6/29/2011 |
| 7 | Vanity Fair-Elizabeth Taylor | $1.99 | 583 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 3/31/2011 |
| 8 | Boston Globe-Whitey's Fall | $2.99 | 781 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6/29/2011 |
| 9 | Guardian-Phone Hacking | $2.99 | 570 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8/4/2011 |
| 10 | Huffington Post-Great Recession | $4.99 | 834 | 3 | 4.5 | 7 | 8/27/2011 |
| 11 | Huffington Post-How We Won | $4.99 | 727 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 9/20/2011 |
| 12 | Washington Post-Hunt for bin Laden | $1.99 | 145 | 14 | 3 | 21 | 6/27/2011 |
Source: Amazon.com, September 24, 2011KB: file size in bytes$per Byte Rank: Price / file size (KB)Ave: average review rating based on Reviews (number of stars)
- Washington Post-Hunt for bin Laden: it seems odd that 21 people “Liked” this but it received only average reviews. It was also “expensive” in that the file size was the smallest of the 12 surveyed. Little “value”?
- You would think there would be more reviews given the brands involved, the hot topics and length of availability. The Vanity Fair book on Taylor is a case in point. I wonder how many it has sold.
- Certain prices seem out of line. I’m looking at the NYT’s Open Secrets and the New Yorker’s 911 book at $5.59 and $7.99, respectively. Could people feel that previously published articles can’t be worth as much as a “best seller”/traditional book?
- The core audience, at least in terms of the publisher’s ability to directly market their book, would be the publication’s readers. How many of them then have already read the material? They may not be convinced that these eBooks offer anything different than they already know, or have read.
- Looking at the results so far this is a work-in-progress. Pricing varies widely and consumer interest is difficult to gauge. Does the strength of the brand and appeal of the topic trump the brand of the writer?
