The End of the Ebook?

Kindle Ebook ReaderYesterday I had a debate with my friend Ryan about the future of ebooks.

I had just uploaded my audio and PDF transcript and was seeing subscribers coming along nicely. I was suggesting the same tactic for another project we were working on together.

You might already know, I am a big fan of ebooks. I buy them, I read them, I give them away, I even plan to sell them.

Free EbookRyan doesn’t believe in them. He thinks bloggers should do series posts instead. In fact, he doubts ebooks have much of a future.

I can see his point. Ebooks are about reading a large amount of material in one package. Most I imagine get read online rather than printed out or downloaded to a reading device such as Amazons Kindle.

Then look at prominent bloggers such as Aaron Wall and Brian Clark, their content has been turned into member sites rather than ebooks. Aaron in particular is surprising as for years he made a good income out of his SEOBook but now his content is delivered as an SEO Training Course.

It is easy to see the attraction of a member site for content producers. First off is obviously the recurring revenue. One sale versus monthly income. After that it is also about lifetime value, a one-off book purchase versus an ongoing relationship with all the opportunities that implies.

For the customer, with a member site you get not just words and pictures but video, audio, discussion, web conferencing, chat, and maybe tools and utilities also. An ebook is capable of more than words and pictures but rarely is.

The downsides to ebook delivery is clear also. Ebooks are routinely copied and shared, it is so easy to do and largely untraceable. The more people try to prevent it, the more damage is done to legitimate customers by applying restrictive DRM and other draconian measures.

Is this the beginning of the end for the humble ebook or is there life in the old dog yet?

Please share your thoughts in the comments …

Free Screencast Creation and Hosting Online Service

Screencast-O-MaticIt sometimes amazes me what clever people can make web services do. I thought Sketchcast was clever, now that has been blown away by a similar idea but much smarter. Forget just being able to sketch, Screencast-o-Matic allows you to create and host Screencasts!

When I was looking for Mac software to do screencasts it took me a while to discover iShowU which is not bad but is way under featured compared to Camtasia on the PC. This website does pretty much what iShowU can do, for free and without installing any software.

It should not be underestimated how tricky the performance part of screencasting can be. Believe me, even though I have spent most of my career demonstrating and teaching techy stuff, I have tried it and found it extremely difficult. This service will allow you to practice the art without spending any money, great stuff.

The only requirement seems to be Java 1.5, and if you want the mouse cursor to appear you need a PC or Intel Mac.

There are various screen sizes, frame rates and export options. Once your creation is complete you can then share and embed in your website. It’s like a YouTube for screencasts. Bloggers will love it.

Check it out and let us know what you find or create with it.

How to win the war on spending, visually!

Recently I have been scolded for writing too much about technology and theory (i.e. stuff that only interests me). The main Scolder was Ms. Hadar Kadar, our director of customer relations. She pointed out that every once in a while we should post something that is actually useful to our customers (and was right as she usually is).

And so with this post, we are starting a new tradition. Every week, Hadar will prepare and post a new Excel Video Tutorial. This week’s tutorial is about controlling expenses. We would love to get your feedback on this. This template was prepared for Excel 2007.

Enjoy!

You can download the template here