Tim,
I would be surprised if you have not seen this question before, but I can't find it in your online archive, so I thought I would ask. Do you think that you will ever offer soft copies of your books free to those people who have already purchased hard copies? The CD bookshelves that you currently sell look very interesting and useful for carrying along on business trips. I would definitely find it useful to have such a light-weight reference instead of the comparable hard copy versions to carry around. However, I already own many of the hard copy versions of the books covered on the CDs. For example, I already own all of the books contained on the Perl CD Bookshelf, with the exception of the Win32 book which I do not need. I know of many other people in the same situation.
Would it be possible for you to allow purchasers of the hard copy versions to download the individual HTML versions of the books, and perhaps compile their own personalized bookshelf? I have not figured out any logistics on the best way to go about doing that, and perhaps it would be a huge mess, logistically speaking. I was just wondering if you have given it any thought.
I was just reading a review of the Perl CD Bookshelf, and one of the major complaints of readers was that they already owned the hard copies of the books, and thought that they should get the soft copies for free.
Thanks,
Dave
Dave,
There's certainly some justice to the argument that you should only have to buy a book once, but if you just throw in an online copy whenever you buy the hardcopy, there is an unfortunate side-effect: you create the perception that an online book "ought to be free."
Because we believe that online information delivery will be a very important part of our business in future, we can't encourage that perception. It's precisely because there is such pressure for online information to be free that we feel a real need to create a perception of value around online books. If the hardcopy is seen as having cost, and the online copy as being free, what happens when the hardcopy goes away and only the softcopy is left? That's why, when many of our competitors did bundle CDs containing the text in the back of their books, we created the CD bookshelf bundles--to get people in the habit of thinking of this as value that they should be prepared to pay for.
That being said, I love the idea of bundles, where you buy both at the same time for a discounted price. That's why I like the fatbrain ematter program that lets you buy the hardcopy for 20% off list, the softcopy for 30% off list, and both together for full price. That's a creative way of building a revenue stream for online books.
Note that it's much easier to do this on the front end than it is to do after someone has already bought the book, since the "proof of purchase" transaction adds significant cost to a book sold through an indirect channel. That's why I expect these hardcopy/softcopy bundles to take off first with online booksellers, and only later with brick and mortar bookstores who will have a harder time of dealing with the simultaneous purchase of print and online books. Fatbrain is taking some leadership here (although many people don't like the PDF approach, and would prefer a web-based version of the book), and I can't imagine why Amazon hasn't jumped into this market. For that matter, working out a way to sell harcopy/softcopy bundles would be a creative way for Borders.com or BarnesandNoble.com to differentiate themselves.
Of course, CD Bookshelf products and ematter versions of some titles are only two of many experiments we're running in an attempt to build up business models for online books. We will be selling online access to individual books and collections of books on a subscription basis starting next year. And I imagine that we'll figure out some way of giving a discount to people who've previously bought books. (It's a good argument for product registration for books, so we know who's bought them, and can make these kind of offers.)
--Tim
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