Hi,

I am a big fan of O'Reilly books - they're great. However, I have just been searching your website for publications and I'd like to see far more (all ?) of them available ON CD-ROM or distributed from your web-site in electronic format. The music industry is moving in that direction, why should the book guys not do so as well.

I bought the Networking CD Bookshelf and appreciate the advantages it gives Joe Consumer:

• cost(!): much cheaper
• storage: I have a lot of books, and I am starting to run out of space
• search ability: Electronic search tools (especially for techie publications)
• portability: (for me at least) I have access to a computer throughout most of the day and can carry a lot of my books with me for reference during work
• distribution: Internet: quicker, more global availability; CD: far less shipping cost
• upgradability: instead of buying a new book entirely, could put an upgrade price/mechanism in place for new editions of a book

None of this should hurt the writer and publisher revenues. On the contrary, with the money I now spend paying for unnecessary printing/distribution costs, I'd rather buy more e-books.

(Question about the Networking CD Bookshelf: why is it being distributed with a book included? That defeats the purpose -- don't do that!)

There. I have said my peace.
My best regards,

Rudy Schepens
Calgary, Alberta

Rudy,

The reason is that it would be much more difficult to get it into our dominant distribution channel--bookstores--if we didn't do this. Think of it as a "carrier wave" for the signal. As more people get used to paying for online content online, this will not be necessary. But for right now, it helps to get the online content out where people will come across it and buy it.

We're starting to do a lot more work with electronic books as the marketplace and the technology matures. Expect to see a number of co-marketing and distribution deals for electronic books from us over the next six months.

(The biggest obstacle to this marketplace right now is vendors who want to have a "one low price for lots of content" business model, with the idea that they'll make it up in volume. This may have been good for web content, where there wasn't an existing cost and pricing model, but it is tough with books, where you're cannibalizing one proven revenue stream with another. It's encouraging that more vendors (such as ibooks.com) are starting to go with a per-book pricing model, which retains the economic incentives for authors and publishers to keep doing work that people will pay for.)

--Tim

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