Can 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.
Fascinating, especially since they are publishing in one of the most user-unfriendly formats. I wonder how much their sales would jump if the published in a format people liked to use.
Excellent question, Paul. Big reasons for the dichotomy:
1) Wowio is a designer-friendly place. That’s a positive in terms of the superb graphics in Wowio books. It’s a negative as far as as reliance on PDF.
2) While Wowio’s text-heavy books are of great interest to me, the real action seems to be with comic books and graphic novels. Wowio folks may feel that .epub isn’t far enough to do justice to them. Solution? For now, at least offer alternatives to PDF in the case of text-heavy works.
Thanks,
David
Advice Offered: Why NOT advertise Wowio.com? You’ve got an ad for a $375 overpriced eBook (read in lit room only) reader, why not a free PDF eBook source?
Your ads are not overbearing, they don’t interrupt the flow of the article. If we readers are so sensitive that we can’t read (or not read) an ad that does not even impinge on the article space, well, it would be a sad state of affairs if that were so. Heck, I give a link for free to Wowio on my web-presence for free because I believe it’s a concept that deserves my support (and no, I don’t have any interest in the company, nor any book published on their site).
As for Wowio ads, calling them restrained seems an understatement! The first two pages and the last page, three clicks and you’re past and reading your otherwise free PDF eBook.
Personally, understanding the marketing concept, I make sure to click once (and only once) on the first ad page to help Wowio in their business, hey, it’s the least I can do to payback for what they provide, and who knows, maybe I WILL see something that will be useful (strangers things…).
So, yeah, I say help them out, and if they figure your site is worth a buck or two, good for you, but if not, I’d still provide a link, but hey, that’s just me.
^.^
Dave, thanks for understanding the situation here. The TeleBlog is a real compulsion of mine–I find it hard not to do it–and it’s drawing thousands and thousands of readers, with help from other contributors such as Robert Nagle, Paul Biba and Ficbot (not to mention help from Jon Noring and Joe Wikert and Mike Cane and countless others). Now to puzzle out a business model where the interests of the advertisers and the readers will be closely aligned! I’ll also welcome suggestions about other companies to approach. Thanks again. David
Has anyone tried reading a Wowio comic on Cybook/Kindle?
now if only wowio had a wider distribution – over this side of the pond would be nice!
As for eBabel, I’ve blogged about this before prior to knowing the buzzword for the strange and fragmented ebook situation we currently find ourselves in.
As for the advertising, I hardly notice it on this site – one more isn’t going to make a huge difference to the site, purely in my not so humble opinion…
[…] hard to say whether either model worked out for Wowio, although it did boast of paying half a million dollars in royalties in the 4th quarter of 2007. In fact, it's hard to say anything […]