http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/22/are-books-dead-ewan-morrison/print

Magazine-length work begins to get interesting as paid content revenue as a market scales, but eBooks need to be part of your revenue equation, unless you’re happy being dependent upon ad income.

Yes, there is a smaller value for newspaper articles, followed by magazine stories, and, yes, you do pay more for books. Yet, the average reporter writes a several newspaper articles a day, a freelancer might write a handful of magazine articles a month and I expect a person writing a book will spend 10 months to a couple years producing an ebook. What’s the value of that book after divided by the time? I think you’d be disappointed at the income per day margin, which would fall much closer to the income per day for newspaper and magazine work.

By the way, get a copy editor to read through your posts before you send them out to the world.

I dearly hope newsrooms remain open, and I agree with the commenter who said on-line publications also do original reporting. That said, without a New York Times or Washington Post, what’s the bar? Slate? Huffington Post?

As we journalists struggle to make a (better) living, I would also urge us to continue fighting for literacy here in the US. I am seeing a huge dumbing down, especially among the teen-twenty-something set and their texting obsession. I’m not seeing anyone reading books on the subway anymore, and even finding a businessman with his head in a New York Times is a thrill.

Mainly, everyone’s attached to a Netbook, a Blackberry or mobile phone. And the dumber the people get, the less need there will be for any kind of intelligent news.

They’ll get it through reporting, just like the print newsrooms do. Haven’t we put to rest the false accusation that online-only publications do no original reporting?

Ebook publication simply allows news publishers an additional revenue stream to support newsgathering, in addition to advertising revenue.

ML