CompuServe Messages

Jan: I hope you don't think I was "attacking" your examples, I was disagreeing, but… Re: newspapers. They not only have a problem with paid circulation, they are having problems proving _readership_. ABC's claim is correct to the extent that most people do indeed get their news from electronic broadcast media. So the question the publisher must ask is, if it is increasingly tough to publish a single city's news in a single paper that members of that community will read, how useful would a daily compilation of 1000 papers be? Keeping in mind that most of the revenue comes from advertisers who support the overhead costs of keeping the company in business. New forms of communications may in fact be the best way to to deliver that information, if they can figure out how to get paid for it. Re: OED. First of all, I think I said the dictionary was "lousy" for everyday use. It is the best and only of its kind for scholarship about the language. That is what makes it interesting to some, and less interesting to others (the majority). Secondly, yes indeed the cost of the software which provides additional usefulness of the content is indeed a legitimate and significant cost factor for an electronic version! Your points demonstrate the differences in the dynamics of differing kinds of publishing businesses. Newspapers and magazines make their money by selling advertising. Businesses pay for access to the readership, the publisher uses that money to create the product. Books like OED or Just Grandma and Me or whatever, must recover all their costs, AND make a profit, directly from the buyer. There is no advertiser to buffer the consumer from all the costs. [continued in reply]