The TurnKey Publishing Blog by Matthew S. Chan

I have been formulating a new publishing concept of an eBook subscription.

The ongoing problem of publishing is that books and audio programs are “snapshot” products.  These products do not evolve with the onslaught of new information that often needs to be incorporated into existing titles.  As such, I have avoided subjects, such as technology and Internet, that are extremely time-sensitive in nature.

No matter how much current information I gather for a book project, 6-12 months later the information begins to stale and become outdated.  Unless the title is going to be a great mainstream seller, it is simply not practical to do update these titles for very niche titles and subjects.

A technology review and reporting project that I started writing last year continues to sit in my computer unshared and unpublished because it is a niche title that only select readers will want to read.  It is not for the mainstream audience.  It contains valuable and proprietary information I have gathered over the years and incorporated into my technology and online operation.

It is something I want to publish and feel would be a great product but I cannot simply wrap it into a singular eBook because I want the ability to continually update the product.  At the same time, I have to find a way to make sure that updates only reach legitimate buyers of the product.

And so, what I have come up with is the concept of an eBook Subscription.  Specifically, I will be offering a 1-year subscription to a high-end technology eBook that will be continually updated over the course of a year.  People are not going to buy this book based on the literary prose.  They will be buying this eBook for the hard-to-find and hard-to-review information and technology products I use within my various business ventures.  My technology list is updated approximately every 2-3 months because I tend to incorporate updates or new technology into my operation.

I will be launching this within the next few weeks and carefully monitor the eBook Subscription concept.  If it works, I will continue to expand it.  If it does not work as well as I would like, then I need to make adjustments to the implementation.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Internet & Technology, eBooks, ePublishing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.