Old Elephants Lumbering Through the Mud
Random House and HarperCollins are attempting to use technology to sell more print and digital titles.
HarperCollins is letting readers sample titles on its site and maybe, just maybe!, get an e-book for free. Free! And Random House is selling bundles of chapters for $2.99.
Matt Shatz, Random House’s Digital Vice President, which I can only assume means that he doesn’t actually exist but is instead a computer algorithm making decisions as a series of ones and zeroes from some server in Nassau, said the experiment is intended “to gauge the demand for short form electronic content.”
Gauge the demand for short form electronic content???
Text messages.
Emails.
Blogs.
Instant messaging.
Yeah. I think those things are popular.
I was fine up until you mentioned cellphone novels (which lead me to your other post). WTF is up with that? I can barely see the text on my screen and i have a “smartphone”, they expect me to read an entire novel on that? No thanks. As soon as they can accomplish something like this i will be happy to read an e-book.