Talk about great synergy, repackage content and republish across a brand new media. That is what Newsweek is doing and I think it is a great idea. During this election period, voters are interested in knowing as much as they can about the candidates. Newsweek is taking these articles and putting them into a book series on the candidates. But rather than publish them with the risk of losing money on the cost of ink and paper and distribution costs, they are creating e-books for Kindle.
"This week, Newsweek will publish four books, one about each of the major presidential and vice presidential candidates — Senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, and Gov. Sarah Palin... Turning this kind of collection into books is an old idea; what is new is to do it with such minimal production and distribution costs that even the most limited sales could be profitable."
I expect more publishers to follow a similar tact. If content can be monetized more than once, it becomes that much more profitable. The timing for this type of coverage at this moment in history is never better. And the Kindle technology gets a boost from this kind of increased awareness. Try reading these books on an iPhone and you may become a believer. Perhaps it is time for Apple to have its own reader in the marketplace.
