ENTRIES TAGGED "Information Wants to Be Shared"
Ebook lending vs. ownership
Why not borrow since you're not really buying anyway?
In an earlier article called Free and the medium vs. the message I excerpted liberally from a terrific short ebook by Joshua Gans called Information Wants to Be Shared. (Buy the ebook direct from HBR’s website, use the code ADINFO1 you’ll only pay 99 cents, btw.) I’d like to revisit and excerpt from that title one more time and focus on the subscription model Gans sees for the book industry.
Free and the medium vs. the message
Valuable lessons from "Information Wants to Be Shared"
I wrote a short piece earlier about an interesting ebook from HBR by Joshua Gans. It’s called Information Wants to Be Shared and I’m declaring it the must-read ebook of 2012. If you buy it direct from HBR’s website and use the code ADINFO1 you’ll only pay 99 cents, btw.
Information wants to be…shared
HBR offers an innovative model to promote low-priced ebook sharing
Joshua Gans is the author of a new ebook from Harvard Business Review called Information Wants to Be Shared. The title is provocative enough but what makes it particularly interesting is that it’s not written by a publishing veteran. Gans is an economist by trade and therefore brings a fresh perspective to the concept of open vs. closed platforms for digital content.
There’s another very interesting aspect to this ebook though. The author and publisher have decided to put their money where their mouths are, so to speak, and are encouraging a low-cost sharing model for the content. I paid $4.99 for the Nook edition but you don’t have to. Because you know me (or read this article) you can get Information Wants to Be Shared for the low, low price of 99 cents. All you have to do is go to the book’s catalog page on the HBR site and plug in the promotional code ADINFO1. (Btw, I have nothing to gain from this. No affiliate fee. I don’t know the author. Nothing.)
This campaign touches on another point that’s near and dear to my heart: Publishers need to establish a direct relationship with their customers. In this case, HBR will never know who I am because I bought the ebook from B&N. But everyone who uses that discount code becomes a direct customer for HBR. Once again it proves just how smart those Harvard types are.
I started reading the ebook last night and I’ve found it to be very thought-provoking. I bet you will too. And since you’ll pay 80% less for it than I did why not give it a shot? 🙂