Books By E-mail and RSS: Q&A With the Creator of DailyLit.com

EXTRA: What advantages do you feel digital books and installments of digital books have over traditional print books?

DANZIGER: Installments via DailyLit are readable on PDAs, Blackberries, Treos and anywhere you receive e-mail. You don’t need to remember to bring a book. Since you always carry your phone and spend most of the day on the computer, installments are only a click away.

EXTRA: Many in the industry think that e-books and the e-book revolution are still a few years off. Do you agree and do you feel that the industry will see a shift toward more digital acceptance?

DANZIGER: The key is customization. If you give busy readers easy-to-achieve milestones of reading (e.g., under five-minute installments), you can create a successful digital program. DailyLit allows readers to set the days of the week, time of day and method of receiving the installments. For instance, a commuter could receive e-mail installments every weekday at 7:00 a.m. – or a publishing executive could receive installments at noon everyday via an RSS feed to be read during lunch.

EXTRA: In addition to offering classic and unlicensed contemporary titles via Creative Commons, you are now partnering with book publishers and licensing their material. Will you continue to offer the content for free or will there be a fee for that licensed content?

DANZIGER: Classic and contemporary works (available via Creative Commons at CreativeCommons.org) will continue to be free of charge. Copyrighted content from publishers and authors will require a small payment that can be made via credit cards or PayPal.

EXTRA: Are advertisements placed within the digital copy you send out, and if not how does your site make a profit?

DANZIGER: At this point, we do not include advertising in the installments (except for a link to Amazon). In the future, publishers may be able cross-market their other titles within each installment, and we plan to open a certain number of limited slots on the site to publishers where they can feature their titles. The site’s revenue will come from modest payments that readers will need to make for copyrighted content.