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I don’t have time to comment fully on this — if you’ve been paying attention, you can guess the things I usually say — but take a look at the latest development from Seth Godin’s ‘The Domino Project’.
Right on so many levels: a public-domain text, cleaned up and dressed nicely for digital distribution, sponsored by an advertiser who senses a link with the title, free for download — the value to the sponsor being the advertising benefit of the association. Now, I haven’t been able to look inside (the UK, you understand, is separated from the US by an electronic gap that prevents transmission of digital data across the continental boundary), but even if Domino’s realisation of the project falls short, there’s no earthly reason why someone else couldn’t step up and do it right the next time. In fact, if I were Seth, I’d be gearing up to hit this hard again very soon. He stands to gain the most from getting the fastest publish>correct>publish cycle to market (even if his only aim is strictly to catalyse the e-book marketplace) — as he knows: ‘Speed triumphs. Rapid time to market, rapid evolution, rapid response to reader feedback.’
N.B. Remember that Seth has for a long time had the textbook publishing marketplace in his sights. Connect these dots.
Hmm, it is interesting and even maybe exciting, but is it good?
There’s something about it that makes be just slightly unsure. Free is an excellent price, but there’s a bit more at stake. The direct involvement of Amazon means it is quite a long way from being ‘open’.
Somehow makes hope that I’d hesitate if I was told I could drink as much water as I wanted (and maybe never pay any water bills so long as I drank it from some newly created Coca-Cola Branded Water Taps.
It strikes me that somewhere on the way, something other than money is changing hands. One is being given the right to read the book in exchange for one’s contact details. The public domain text is being dressed up, sure, but now has new limitations put on it and in exchange for something as valuable and significant as an ongoing relationship between the purveyer and the reader.