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By David Rothman

image The once-glorious Wowio site for ad-supported e-books and comics has drawn a well-deserved knock from About.com‘s comic book guy—just as grumpy after Platinum Studios’ latest acquisition as we are.

Aaron Albert writes: "The original idea was for users to be able to read and download comics for free, but with advertisements. Now, you can still read them online for free, but to download them, you have to pay. Some of the comics are as much as $3.99, more than most comics on the stand…

"The interface is pretty terrible, making it hard to read comics."

"Issues with creator payments"

imageAccording to Albert (photo), Wowio’s new owner has "had issues with creator payments, disgruntled employees, and have come under an enormous amount of scrutiny by Internet bloggers the world over. Their biggest problem has been their contracts, which are basically viewed as intellectual property farms to bring in ideas to market to other media."

OK. I’m waiting to see if Platinum will give us back the old Wowio, which we praised again and again. If not, Wowio will get two kinds of publicity from us. Negative and none. Meanwhile, as promised, I’ve e-mailed Wowio for its side. Let’s hope it’ll listen.

Related: Yesterday’s love letter to Wowio: Ad-cluttered Wowio e-book site: The uglier side of globalization—minus those classy free PDF downloads. Also see Elle’s damage report, Garson O’Toole’s cautionary analysis about ad-supported books, and other TeleBlog items about them.

image The upside of ad-supported books: In a Buzz Machine post, Jeff Jarvis talks about including "a sponsor or two" in a book he’s been writing. "Ads in books," he blogs, "would be less irritating than commercials interrupting shows or banners blinking at you on a web page." Maybe, Jeff. But with outfits like Platinum around, don’t take that for granted. If Platinum releases new Wowio books with embedded ads, will the results won’t be as ugly as the current site? (Thanks, Robin.)

 
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