|
When I worked for a newspaper 15 or so years ago, I was told by the circulation manager that the subscription revenue was about equivalent to printing cost; the real revenue was generated by ad sales. By that reasoning, newspapers should hope people actually distribute the files. The problem is that as NatCh said, the publishers need to be able to provide evidence to the advertisers of circulation in order to command high insertion rates. So the only software that would really be needed is something that tracks readership, no matter how the file is acquired (and makes it difficult to remove the ads, of course).
The same could be done with books, of course, but many people seem to balk at the idea of ads in books, even if it would make the books themselves free and unrestricted by DRM.
|