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Good point. The "book format" in particular has a lot of future. For example, packaging a series of blog posts into a short ebook on a topic, then investing tim
by ivan_ah 11y ago
Good point. The "book format" in particular has a lot of future. For example, packaging a series of blog posts into a short ebook on a topic, then investing time to polish the content can turn into an excellent "product" to be sold through the website. Fuck ads for other people's products, advertise your own!
It makes sense for blog posts to be free since they are "draft quality," but once an editor has put some thought into making a coherent and comprehensive guide to subject X, it's totally OK to charge for this extra work. And I mean "OK" not as a moral "is allowed to," but in the market "people will buy"-sense.
The extra work the author invests is called information distillation. The author "processes" a lot of information (primary sources like books, research, other webpages) and produces a comprehensive summary of the topic in question. Blog posts are "best effort" acts of information distillation; books are more thorough and deliberate efforts.
I can attest from personal experience that people are interested in information distillation today (I sell math books). I think this trend will continue into the future—the more information out there, the more people will need secondary sources to help them make sense of it.