March 05, 2013

There are basically three ways to go about this. You can put up a paywall; you can ask for donations; or you can sell non-digital things to your digital audience.

On its face, Palmer's talk is about the second strategy, but in fact it's about all three. (And yes, I’m the "financial blogger" referred to in the talk.) For instance, when it comes to online publishing, why are paywalls more common than tip jars, despite the fact that they're much more difficult to implement? Palmer does a great job of walking us through the answer to that question: there's something shameful, there's a whiff of the panhandler, in asking strangers for money.

However, researchers often overlook students' personal beliefs about how they learn and study most effectively. Their resistance to replacing paper textbooks with e-textbooks together with an ongoing desire to be able to print electronic content suggests that paper-based information serves students' needs better in the educational context.

Labels: ebooks, music streaming, Spotify, YouTube