Hats Off to Harper

Could this represent a (if not the) future of book publishing?

HarperCollins is trying out a new model for selling books: the publishing division of News Corp. made the entire text of a new business book available free on the Web.

Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a Successful Business on Your Own, by Bruce Judson, can be found at the author’s Web site, www.BruceJudson.com.

In an additional departure from the bookselling norm, the title is also an advertising vehicle, with different ads appearing on every one of its more than 200 Web pages. Ad revenue will ultimately be shared between the author and the publisher.

Ah, but wait:

Visitors to the site are also urged to buy a copy of the book by clicking on a link to Amazon.com.

Doh!

The question is: will people choose to read books this way, or will they want to print it out and read a hard copy (that's probably not going to be cheaper than buying the book, but it does solve the "I want it now" nature of on-demand delivery of content)? Or will they just use this as a sort of "Look Inside" way of evaluating a book before buying it?

If I had to guess (and, well, I supposed I have to), the "Look Inside" approach will be the first, but my suspicion is that, as time goes on, people will just skim online books and not read them in their entirety anyway. This of course presupposes that publishers will be doing more of this kind of thing--and I just don't see that happening.

Then again, HarperCollins' approach isn't a million miles removed from what we all use the Web for anyway--we're just talking about longer documents, but when read in short bursts, comes back to everyday Web access. After all, what difference does it make if I go to CNN.com and read the top story(ies) every day or go to a book's Web site and read a chapter a day? It's the same basic thing. As for the idea of "saving a copy" for later use/reference, sure I can print it (or buy it), but more likely I'll link to it on this blog--with my own "marginal notes" added (now you see the method to my madness!).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think the whole relationship that we as a culture have with books is changing. This isn't just due to the Internet; radio, movies, and TV created whole generations of people who just don't read books (or don't read that many of them), and now the Internet, VOD, and other new media are just exacerbating that. And when you look at how younger people (and even older people these days) multitask--well, books are a hard medium to multitask with. At least magazine content is in smaller chunks that more easily lend themselves to being interrupted when an IM comes through or while watching TV, or listing to an iPod...or whatever else is going on at the same time. My suspicion is that we're going to start seeing books become more snippet-like--or written/presented/produced in a way that lends itself to integration in a multitasked media environment. Of course, if e-paper-based e-books take off, that will make them interactive, which will only make the integration that much easier.