Kevin Kelly's Free Book Experiment

Every year or so my friend Kevin Kelly releases an updated version of his book-length True Films guide to the best documentaries. He's done it in print (through Lulu and Amazon) and he's done it as a cheap ebook download from the True Films site.

This year he's doing something new. He's released the book as a special pdf that, when read with Adobe Acrobat 8, shows ads on the side. He explains:

These ads are inserted into the PDF by Adobe (using the Yahoo ad network) when you open the file. Like Google Adsense ads, they are contextual. That is, Adobe/Yahoo tries to match the content of the ads with the content of text on the the pages, in my case, text about documentaries. The ads I see at this moment of writing are mostly about apartment rentals, but they change each time one opens the book. The way Adobe/Yahoo "knows" about the content of the PDF is not by crawling the web, but by the author (me in this case) submitting the PDF to their machine the first time, which then stamps it with a registration code, so it can remember what's in it when someone far away opens it on their machine.

Like Google, no money flows unless someone clicks on them. If a reader of the True Films PDF books clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays Yahoo, who in turns gives me some small percent, around 5 cents (I think).

But because the PDF file must reach out from your computer to the Adobe server to get the ads, an action that some readers may not approve, seeing the ads is an opt-in default. You have to agree to see the ads before any will show up. You will also need the latest version of Acrobat Reader (8) to see them. If you use an older version no ads will show up, and you'll see only the free book. Since the ads are adjacent to the book, whether you see ads or not will not affect the design of the book itself.

I'm delighted that he's exploring new models, but I doubt this one will make much money. First, Yahoo's contextual matching stinks, or something's gone wrong with it this time, since the ads were all for apartments when I looked. Even if they did get the context right, five cents a click isn't much when you think that only one in a hundred readers will click on an ad, and most people don't have Acrobat 8 yet and won't even see the ads in the first place. But money wasn't why Kevin wrote the book, and I suspect he's more interested in the experiment than the revenues.

As for the book itself, it's a delight and an essential accompaniment to a Netflix subscription. The only improvement I'd like to see is a table of contents. Both website and book are a bit hard to navigate, unless you're looking for the serendipity of a scroll from top to bottom. If you love documentaries, or just want to dip your toe into them guided by an expert, start here.

Comments

[Kevin Kelly]

Yes, the first versions of the book did not need a Table of Contents because they were few enough reviews, but now that the tally has reached 200, it should have one. Wish I had done that earlier. I'll swap out a new version when I add the ToC.

It's an experiment in which I don't expect to make much (any?) money, but one in which I hope to learn lots -- because this will become a common experiment soon. All the variables are in play -- degree of contextualization, percentage of fees, and ubiquity of appropriate reader.

[michael webster]

Does Kelly have an affiliate relationship with Netflix?

[David Bressler]

Chris,

Wonder why you are seemingly negative on this idea? I think much better than the forced 15 second commercial we have to watch if we watch video news or something on yahoo! That commercial has caused me to not even bother clicking on video links (15 seconds is longer than my attention span).

Forgetting for a second that Yahoo! algorithms aren't great, the adds are non-intrusive, hopefully relevant, and perhaps there will even be some way to integrate the "offline experience" so perhaps ads can be cached locally, and clicks queued with an email response or something when the reader is back online...

In any case, I for one wouldn't mind those links any more than I mind the ones on the sides of blogs or my gmail.

David

[Chris Anderson]

David,

Just to be clear, I'm very supportive of the effort, which I think is an important step in exploring new models for books. I just suspect that this particular implementation won't make much money for Kevin. For one thing, Acrobat shows the same ads on the right for the entire book, so you've only got one shot at getting a click, and the context (such as it is) is on the book as a whole rather than the page that you're on. A traditional web-based page view model would allow for more ad variety and more granular targeting.

But the more important point is that making money was not the point of the book, and that anything that allows it to attract the broadest possible audience is to be applauded. From that perspective, I think it's a great step forward.

[Francis David]

Free Books are always the way to go to attract audiences. Delivery is the next important thing to consider. I would have probably considered it to be a bigger authority, if it contained refferences to and quotes from well known and reknowned people. No doubt effort has gone into the more specific critique which i applaud. Great experiment. Free is always best, to increase attention.

[kabin]

thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner

[jeux ds]

Nice post. This can lead to a change in the book publishing industry. This might make it easier for more people to create and profit from writing a book. Thousands of books are published every year but ony a few are profitable. If I'm reading a book on stocks I would most likely be interested in ads related to the stock market. We have ads everywhere, in bathroom stalls, elevators, coffee cups, why not in books. If your reading a certain book it most likely means your interested in that topic and would like to get relevant ads. But that's the key - relevant ads.