[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Newspapers are usually read only once.
Magazines are usually read only once.
Comics are usually read only once .

Newspapers, magazines & comics are often handed around a group of readers. They work to push brand awareness even for non-customers; ebooks don't have that--nobody will see it on the kitchen table, sitting open to the ads. They won't be donated to a waiting room for other readers after the first, either. Nobody will browse through it at the supermarket and see the ads in passing.

Ads in ebooks are designed to be seen by exactly *one* person. Ads in magazines, comics, and newspapers are designed to be seen by more than the buyer.

TV shows are usually watched only once.

TV shows are watched by millions of people; a book is read by thousands. A book that could guarantee 10 million sales would indeed be a popular choice for advertisers. However, while there are hundreds of TV shows every year that get 10m viewers, there aren't a dozen books that can count on that.

Movies are usually watched only once

In the theatres, ads aren't embedded in the middle of them, and ads at the beginning & end are mostly limited to "more of this type of entertainment coming soon." (Also. Do those ads make the movies cheaper? Are there ad-supported and not-ad-supported movies? If not, that's an entirely different advertising model.) For the ones piped through cable & tv services--they're just nonserialized TV shows.

Types of books often read more than once .

*Self-help books
*Manuals
*reference books
*Inspirational books
* Textbooks

Do you have any indication that these sell well as ebooks? Most of those are exactly what ebook software fails to support.

Publishers in the past have been quite willing to have their products subsidized by advertising. It is only the question of the right model.

No, it's a case of "someone else pays the rest of the desired list price."

If your argument is that it is technologically impossible to insert ads into ebooks, I very much doubt that.

My argument is that it's technologically impossible to insert *useful* ads into either of the two dominant ebook forms at the moment, .mobi and .epub, and that ads in other formats (PDF) will cut down on purchases because the restrictions necessary for the ads will interfere with usage preferences.

If I bought DRM, I might buy a $5 version of a bestseller with ads; once I discovered it was unreadable on my device of choice, I wouldn't buy a second one.

If your argument is that no one would be willing to pay to create that capability , well, I doubt that even more.

I don't think nobody would, but I do question who--Amazon's not going to hand out their software specs to anyone for the asking, and they've got no motivation for developing a way for individual publishers to insert ads in individual ebooks. Repeat for all other device manufacturers.

People for generations have watched TV with 30 second or longer breaks every few minutes
*Have listened to radio with 30 second ads several times an hour
*Have read newspapers, magazines and comics broken up by ads

But not novels. They do not, traditionally, read novels in 700-word segments broken by ads. You seem to be assuming a major change in reading habits will be easy to encourage.

*Have browsed websites, played games, and used software with banner ads blinking at them

Resulting in widespread adblock software, and at one point, the dotcom crash, as companies figured out that putting their ads everywhere doesn't actually mean people will buy their products.

I dunno. Maybe the same folks who advertise in the banner ads in my freemium games or who pay for all those Web ads that appear beside my search results, etc. There's no shortage of ad money out there.

Banner ads & text ads cost pennies per hundreds of viewers. You're talking dollars per viewer.

Ads on ebook *sites*: absolutely. Lots of people see those. Ads inside an ebook: why? So one person will see it (if they don't have software that skips ads), and might be interested?

Those software designers were paid by investors, who presumably heard and rejected your argument that freemium for ebooks is impossible. Now you may be right, but there are people who are willing to bet pots of money that you are wrong. In a few months we'll find out.

I note they're not listing any publishers who're on board with their plan.

A lot of people are delusional about how people read, and how they want to deal with ebooks, and what the industry will allow. Plenty of businesses have gone broke guessing the wrong direction. I see nothing that indicates this one has any better understanding of the industry.

If they're successful in a few months, you can bring them up as a counter-argument; right now, they're one more form of vaporware that thinks ads will support them.