Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I've been doing work at a client's site the last two days and have been...
offline!  

To respond to a couple of great queries:

Like Reva, I subscribe to AIIP-L, and I also continue to read several of
the business librarians' lists.  There's a lot of peripheral stuff there,
but at least once a week or so, I learn something new, or am reminded of
some great resource.  

As for the online landscape WRT free or micropayment.  I tend to agree
with Reva that the advertiser-supported model won't last for 5 years, at
leasta not in its current form.  B2C ecommerce has been a great boon to
the info industry, as it accustoms people to paying for stuff on the Web,
trusting their credit card to the ether, etc.  However, I'm still not
convinced that people are any more willing now to pay small amounts for
information than they have ever been.  

I tend to think that the trend is toward the CNN.com model.  Give away
content for free to drive the brand.  
  

    
 I don't see how that's workable for lots of sites, though.  What if your
site is both your business and your brand?  For example, apbnews.com just
went out of business despite the fact that they might have been doing the
best crime reporting in any medium.  Part of the problem was that they 
blew a ton of cash on advertising, and probably had too many people working
for them, but the bottom line is that they couldn't earn enough revenue to 
keep their business going.

 I'd like for there to be a niche for Web publishers who are larger than 
the independent publisher who builds a site as a hobby, and aren't big 
media outlets like newspapers or broadcast networks.  Clearly sites like
apbnews.com, Salon, and plenty of others provide valuable content.  How
do we keep them around?
  

    

I can't believe it's been two weeks already!  And you've just barely
scratched the surface.  I thank you all for such a great interview, and
please, by all means, continue as long as you like.
  

    
Alan, yes; the CD includes links to all the sites mentioned in the book,
plus some additional ones.

Castle and crew, thanks for the opportunity to plug Researching Online For
Dummies, 2nd edition.
  

    
And more thanks to <castle> and the hosts, and to our super searcher /
interviewer <coop>.  The questions have given me food for thought,
particularly regarding the future - and future popularity - of Boolean
logic.
  

    

Thank you <castle>, Reva, Mebs, and all of you who took the time to
join the conversation!

Not that I want to stop the dialog...but I have to post this, which may be a
great way to thank Mary Ellen and Reva, for their hard work on the book, on
this interview, and in their daily searching for the ANSWERS!

http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html

And, so, there!
  

    
Thanks for spending time with us Reva, Mebs and Coop (lets hear it for
coop!) Please buy the book if you haven't everyone. It is living in my
laptop bag so that I'll have it everywhere even though I've been looking for
info online since 94 or so.
P.S. There is lots more to the Well than inkwell.vue. www.well.com
  

    

coop - a classy exit, to be sure!