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By David Rothman

menckencoverCan free, ad-supported books, including this Mencken biography, work out as a business model—not universal for all publishers, but at least as one important possibility?

Well, here’s what Wowio founder William Lidwell has just told the Lincoln Heights Literary Society, located in Los Angeles:

“In terms of compensation, I believe we are leading the digital world. In the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, we paid out more than $500,000 in royalties. We regularly hear from our content partners that they make more through WOWIO than through any of their other digital channels of distribution—in some cases, more than all of their digital channels combined. The 2008 royalty rates are fifty-cents per download for books, and 25-cents per download for comics. These rates will be adjusted downward as the number of users grows, but the net effect will continue to be a significant opportunity for creators and publishers to receive incredible exposure and compensation for their work.”

Great news if Wowio isn’t taking a bath on the $500,000+

Now consider this. Some 12-15 publishers, most of them of a good size, I’d suspect, reported $8.2 million in wholesale e-book revenue to the AAP and IDPF in the same quarter. If Wowio isn’t taking a bath in paying out the $500,000+—I’d love to know the full P&L picture—it would seem that Lidwell and friends are doing much better than I’d been expecting. Perhaps that’s because of the heavy emphasis on comics and graphic novels, which make it possible for gems like the Mencken bio to piggyback along.

Wowio can correct me, but I suspect that ads, sponsorships, whatever you want to call them, were the main source of revenue and perhaps even the exclusive one in Q4 of 2007. Now Wowio, started just in the past few years, is expanding into other models.

Significantly, Wowio offers a wide variety of books ranging from the Mencken bio to popular comics. The message comes through lout and clear: Ad-supported books, if done well, don’t have to be junk. Yep, it’s important to scream about abuses in the number of ads. But so far, Wowio has been restrained, as I see it. Let’s hope it continues that way.

Advice sought: Should the TeleBlog approach Wowio as a possible advertiser?

No, the TeleBlog doesn’t run Wowio ads, but maybe we should approach the company, given the strong interest of many of our readers—and my own—in the company’s free, nonDRMed offerings. Anyone have opinions, one way or another? Speak up!

The goal is to keep the TeleBlog sustainable for its hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, not make billions; and I’d rather go with companies sharing my antipathy to DRM (I support efforts toward DRM standards mainly because this compromise would be better than the present mess). Part of any arrangement would be assurance that the TeleBlog could also go on knocking PDF, Wowio’s exclusive format, or be free to complain about excessive numbers of ads in the company’s books if that happened. If you think the number of ads in Wowio books is already too high, speak up.

Speaking of business models…

Another business-model possibility for the TeleBlog is foundation money, although foundations these days seem to say: “We’re don’t care a squat about you if you won’t be self-supporting”—which, of course, raises an interesting Catch-22. Do you see why, even if run as a non-profit, the TeleBlog can’t dismiss the possibility of ads? Last I knew, alas, no stand-alone blogs were operating off endowments. Still another possibility, which in fact I’ve been exploring, would be an alliance with an established media company that would tolerate and ideally encourage our wars against DRM and eBabel.

Related: Richard Adin’s complaint against Wowio’s PDF. May William Lidwell soon get the company to offer alternatives more attractive to handheld users! As well as Wowio appears to be doing, imagine the potential with more reader-friendly formats, especially the .epub standard! The current PDF drove Richard away from Wowio. If Wowio is unhappy with .epub, especially for, say, comics and graphic novels, then it should draw up specs for the IDPF. As keen a booster as I am of .epub, I’m eager to call attention to its deficiencies so the IDPF can address them.

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