Category Archives: Media

Leanpub – a wonderful eBook publishing model

Leanpub ebook publishing

Leanpub send me a mail saying an updated version of Paul Bradshaw’s book Scraping for Journalists is available. The mail includes links to download the book in PDF, EPUB or Mobi formats – or perhaps all three if I want, there’s no digital rights management to worry about.

Because I already purchased the book, the updates are free.

Leanpub is a great way of selling ebooks: buy one, all future updates are free.

Royalties are generous for writers, around 90% less a 50 cents per book fee. If I ever get around to writing another book, this is where I’ll go first.

Another great thing about Leanpub, is the books are reasonably priced. Scraping for Journalists doesn’t include as much information as you might get from an everyday paperback, but the price is about half what you’d pay for a printed book. There’s also a money-back guarantee.

Oh, and it case you’re wondering the Scraping for Journalists book is good too.

Digital magazine sales still tiny overall, but titles like Reader's Digest see huge growth

Reblogged from paidContent:

Nearly 65 percent of U.S. magazines now have a digital replica edition, but those editions make up just under three percent of overall circulation: That's the latest news from the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations), which on Thursday released its report on U.S. magazine circulation in the second half of 2012. For some individual titles, digital growth was a lot more impressive -- though in some cases that's because they're giving away the digital edition free.

Read more… 345 more words

Readers like magazine web sites or even magazine apps on tablets and smartphones. I've never understood the attraction of what PaidContent describes as 'replica editions' that is the same editorial as the print magazine wrapped in a digital format. Digital replicas have clumsy user interfaces - sometimes its a proprietary piece of nonsense requiring a download. Others are effectively PDFs on something similar. Many have relatively low resolution and just don't look good on-screen, Hell, some even mangle the text making it hard to read. Either way, it seems there is a market for them.

Why printed books will never die

bookshelf

The undead

Josh Catone is largely right when he writes Why Printed Books Will Never Die. Although the pedant in me has an issue with the word “never” given that one day the universe will degrade into a particle stew. For now I’ll give Catone poetic license.

He writes:

Ebooks are not simply a better format replacing an inferior one; they offer a wholly different experience.

A good point. I’d read an ebook on a plane. I read work documents on a tablet or ebook. When reading for pleasure I still want to see print and feel paper.

Whenever I hear people predicting the death of printed books I think back to the Roman, Greek and even earlier texts which can still be read today, then remember early electronic texts stored on 8-inch floppies or using now dead digital formats. Some of these are already lost forever.

Related articles

New Scientist’s annoying extra charges for online, smartphone, tablet

New Scientist

New Scientist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For most of the last six years I’ve subscribed to New Scientist magazine. My degree is in Physics and I like to keep up to date with the subject – even if only in a casual way.

Right now I’m on a subscription breather. I do this when the pile of unread paper magazines gets too high. Most likely I’ll subscribe again early in the New Year.

Or maybe not.

A one year subscription to the New Scientist print and web editions costs NZ$255. That’s a good price.

What isn’t so good is the magazine wants NZ$383 to extend that subscription to smartphone and tablet. Presumably we’re not talking about accessing the standard website from mobile devices. I guess the extra NZ$130 or thereabouts is to pay for apps.

An online-only package including smartphone and tablet is NZ$229.

I’ve no objection to paying for an online subscription. I don’t expect to get this kind of information for free and lord knows its difficult to make money from selling advertising into online publications.

But to charge an extra $130 just to view content via an app seems a bit steep.

What do you think?

 

Once were newspaper readers

After hearing Newsweek lost 51% of its print circulation in the space of just five years London-based digital media blogger Martin Belam looked at UK newspaper performance. He found the British market declined 27% over the same period.

How do New Zealand newspapers compare?

I went to the Audio Bureau of Circulation and found comparable numbers for the three large daily metro papers and the two main Sunday papers. This is not a direct comparison, The Herald on Sunday was just getting started in 2007 and that had a big impact on its direct rival The Sunday Star-Times.

During the five-year period the five big New Zealand papers collectively shed 16% of their readers.

The biggest loser was the Sunday Star Times down 28%, while the Herald on Sunday increased its circulation by 11%. The Dominion-Post is down 19% while the New Zealand Herald and the Christchurch Press are down just 15%.

Among these titles Fairfax newspapers lost ground to APN titles.

So, for now at least, New Zealand’s newspapers are holding up relatively well.