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Kevin Kelly, who a couple of years ago wrote this provocative article on the future of books, is at it again, this time asking how it is possible to charge for something in a digital world where the cost of duplication and redistribution is almost exactly zero. While books are not the focus of his latest blog post, he could be talking about the publishing industry when he says 'Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.'

The problem for content producers and owners, as he describes it, is that 'Once anything that can be copied [eg ebooks] is brought into contact with [the] internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once it's flowed on the internet.' For book publishers, struggling with issues of ebook pricing, or looking askance at the record business where copy protection is on the way out and the price of recorded music slides inexorably towards free, working out how to create value and encourage people to pay for digital products is becoming an important issue.

But happily Kelly has a possible balm;

'When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.'

He suggests 8 'values', including authority, personalization and immediacy which increase value for the user and potentially could encourage payment for a something which might otherwise have a tangible value close to zero. I'm not going to copy his entire article here (though I could simply reproduce a digital copy at no cost to myself at all) - but I do suggest checking it out, it is a most worthwhile read. Perhaps most usefully (and something that really should be obvious) is his suggestion that business models are considered from the point of view not of the content creator, owner or distributor, but from the users perspective; What, he asks, can encourage us to pay for something we can get for free?

Meanwhile, the O'Reilly publishing conference is today starting in New York. At last years' conference Chris Anderson scandalized attending publishers when he said that he was trying to get his new book, Free, priced as close to, er, free, as possible since for him books were an advertisement for his speaking and consultancy business. As every single publisher said, 'that's great for him, but what about us?'. Kevin Kelly, thankfully, provides ample food for thought.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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What a weekend! Have you ever put some things off until the last minute (due to so many other things cropping up at the last minute) that you kick yourself into the car and back out again? THAT would be me today. And yesterday and the day before. I can count 5 trips to Archivers (2 in the same day) in the last 4 days and maybe one still to go. I am working on a project which turned out to be more than I anticipated yet a fun project none-the-less that I have to finish in the next few days. Of course, I have never done one quite like this so you can imagine everything that could fobile my plan has, thus the extra trips to Archivers. With today's gas prices I've added a pretty penny to this project as it's a good 5 miles one way. I wish I had a set up like Debby, where everything is at your finger tips. Here work space is incredibly well organized and full of everything one would need. I need to start buying organizers to set things right in my studio, that would help immensly.