Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
Back before Wowio.com changed their business model, they gave away PDFs with advertising embedded on the book cover, a page or two in the beginning of the book and at the end of the book. I didn't find that particularly objectionable.
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The key question: Did you make any purchases based on those ads?
I collected lots of Wowio books before they changed models; I skipped the ads. (I remember most of them being for charities? Maybe?) I certainly never gave anyone money based on those ads.
The problem with ad-supported ebooks isn't making them non-objectionable; it's convincing the advertisers that they're getting something for their money. In order to make it worth their while to pay $1 of the cost of the ebook, they have to believe they're getting more than a dollar per sale, on the average.
If they only cover ten cents of the cost of the book, those ads are going to need to be *very* inoffensive for people to buy the next one. If they make the book free, people will put up with a great range of advertising copy... but those book sales have to return $7-15 per sale to whoever's paying for the book. Somehow, I don't think "this ebook is free, and we expect you to buy a couple of cases of Pepsi--not Coke, and certainly not Jones Soda Co--after buying it," is going to work.