Electronic or digital publishing resources

Summary:

It is now possible to publish documents electronically and receive payments or royalties for them. Here is a brief discription of some resources.

Answer:

Many organizations publish reports for which they charge a small fee.
Handling inventory and shipping can be a significant distraction and cost.
Online publication of digital copies which can be downloaded and printed
offers an attractive alternative. The services listed here allow the
publisher to receive payments for documents published in this way. There are
also procedures for distributing paper copies through bookstores and copy
shops.

Fatbrain

http://www.fatbrain.com
Charges a $1 per month file fee to maintain each document for sale.
Distributes .pdf files after purchase and pays royalties of 50% of purchase
price. Converts into .pdf for free.

iUniverse

http://www.iuniverse.com
Books on demand, but apparently not downloadable digital files. Must be
between 108 and 740 pages. Associated with Barnes&Noble, with (they say)
kiosks in stores.
Also links to Kinko's "ExpressYourselfPress" which is oriented toward
college professors making materials ("for which you own the copyright")
available, apparently through Kinko's stores.

MyPublish

http://www.mypublish.com
A service of Wave Systems. Allows creating encrypted documents for sale
for free, pays royalties for purchases on a sliding scale. Purchasers must
use a Wave account, which requires a separate step to set up.

Universal Publisher

http://www.upublish.com/
Oriented toward books. Charges a setup fee of $495. Pays royalties.
Publishes either as a paperbound book or as a downloadable file. Affiliated
with Amazon.

Etc.

There's a magazine about this subject, which has a website at
http://www.electronic-publishing.com/. And a website whose author discusses
the topic in short articles at http://www.pubspace.com/home.html.

Ryan Turner of OMBWatch circulated a comprehensive essay on this subject to the NPTalk mailing list on February 2, 2000. A slightly later version is available at http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/360/1/96/.

For online publishing the conventional format is Adobe Acrobat's .pdf file.
The software to create these files costs about $250. For limited use,
though, Adobe offers an online service that will convert Word (and other
format) files to .pdf without charge. There are some limitations. See
http://createpdf.adobe.com/.

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Posted 1/14/00; RT piece added 2/2/00, updated 6/17/05 -- PB