From books to ebooks - FYI, dear author

Here’s an interesting story from MarketingSherpa.

MarketingSherpa: How Elsevier Created New Ebooks From Old Content to Lift Revenue 15%: “SUMMARY: Libraries and other institutions continue to add online content databases to their collections. So, opportunity calls for publishers to digitize even more specialty content for these customers.

See how one reference book publisher repurposed content by digitizing thousands of print titles for its paid content site and pushed usage through complimentary downloads. Conversions were strong enough to lift book revenue 15% in 2007.”

(This article is available until February 23)

Your takeaway from this? Basically this: As important as electronic rights have been for the past decade, they’re even more important now, so make sure that both you and your agent are up to date on e-rights, and that you place a strict limit on the length of time for which you license them.