There’s something very strange about the new economics of publishing.
Take the newly published book, released this past week:
Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States
by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Hard copies of the 500+ page report are already available through several booksellers, including Amazon.com
and Powell’s Books in Portland.
Here’s the strange thing. The Kindle edition, delivered electronically, is listed today on Amazon.com for $8.45. The paperback edition, all 576 pages, is $8.89, just 44 cents more, and will ship for free.
Oh, one more thing. The whole report in pdf format is available as a free download in pdf format from the commission’s web site, along with public hearing testimony and exhibits in pdf and video.
So is there any money to be made by publishing this when the whole shebang can be downloaded for free?
In any case, happy reading!
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Iain, if its free as a PDF then you can easily also use a tool like Calibre (excellent freeware) to convert any PDF into a fairly readable .mobi or .azw file (or any other ebook file) although you risk losing formatting.
You can also download it directly to an iPad in Safari and then click open in iBook to save it.