Does “the cloud” pose another opportunity for book publishers? The chart above indicates that demand for wireless access to the Web is only going to grow in the coming years, as will the diversity of devices used for that function.
Book publishers, organizations, agents, and authors should be thinking now, not only how to profitably publish content for ereader consumption of complete downloaded books, but also ways of monetizing content that resides dynamically and virtually in the Internet cloud. One idea: paid subscriptions, taking a cue from the new paywall business model announced by The New York Times (by the way, here’s an analysis of the announcement by Bloomberg Businessweek and broad coverage links by paidContent).
The New York Times is banking on the strength of its brand, even though people may be able to get the (relatively) same news free elsewhere (see 10 Ways To Get Around Online News Subscriptions And Paywalls). But it may work better with book publishers, since each publishers’ content is (relatively) unique from others.
What do you think?