Blogs with "ebook"
When I was growing up print-shops like Quick Print and Kopy Kat were nearly as common as 7-11s. In an era of budding entrepreneurism, everyone needed letter-head, brochures (so-called tri-folds), business cards, etc. However, by the late 1980s, desktop publishing took-off and the copy/printing services retailers were gone almost overnight. Personal computing has had a similar effect on many other industries: design, photography (video), music recording; and when coupled with the internet to delivery these types of goods and services, an entire new business model was born.
An article in the NYT titled, Math of Publishing Meets e-Book, Tuesday, March 2, 2010, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.html?em) explores the costs and market-share of this nascent technology. Here at SelfTOT, we're bringing the associated digital savings to our customers by offering much of our catalogue as digital downloads. (We're currently featuring our two bestsellers, Warrior's Daughter and Run From Diablo; more will be released in the coming weeks. The Books, AudioBooks and Study Guides are bundled into one deep discounted download price of $9.95 per title.) At the time, our downloadable books are simply sent as PDFs via email. Our customers do not need to purchase an expensive e-Book reader like Kindle, rather, they simply open the downloaded email, and then have the choice of printing it (or burn the audiobook MP3s into CDs) or, as we imagine most will do, reading/listening directly from the screen.
Eulogizing printed books and CDs would be premature. But offering digitized products as a low-cost, environmentally conscientious and portable alternatives to traditionally produced media is sure to take-off in a big way.