Beast With Two Backs: Tina Figures Out How To Monetize E-Content: It's Called Paper

We knew print was good for something, and Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair and now publisher of The Daily Beast, figured out what that is: it's called making money.

Her website has launched a joint venture with mainstream publisher/distributor Perseus Books Group to spin paperback books off the online versions. The idea is to maximize the benefits of both formats: e-books to move quickly on fast-breaking stories, p-books to get them into the hands of those who prefer to hold a paper volume in their hands.

Creating the content first as e-books will also accelerate release of the paperbacks, cutting out a number of editorial and production steps that slow down traditional book-making procedures. Mokoto Rich, writing in the New York Times, says that "On a typical publishing schedule, a writer may take a year or more to deliver a manuscript, after which the publisher takes another nine months to a year to put finished books in stores. At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition." The print edition would be ready to go as soon as feasible.

Tina Brown understands that speed is the name of the game: “There is a real window of interest when people want to know something, and that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle.” Read details in Daily Beast Seeks to Publish Faster, and for some insights into the way that publishers customarily handle fast-breaking stories, check out How's About a Quickie?

RC