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by foobarian 1499 days ago
It's interesting how books somehow retained a certain "quality" to them. For example each book has an ISBN ID. Maybe it's because of the publishing cost?

What if there was a premium Web where each website had an ISBN-equivalent, and the dates during which it was "in print?" And to get one published you'd pay a fee to a central register, such as $100.

2 comments

To the SEO listicle sites those 100 bucks are pocket change. To the high quality blog, it's maybe a deal breaker.
I'm wondering why SEO listicle books are not as big of a problem, and how to replicate that.

I guess there is no Google for books, and no ads/affiliate links. And there are libraries where books are manually curated using the Dewey hierarchy.

People pay money for books. It's a much harder sell for a web page.

Listicles do show up in print though. I see them at the grocery checkout stand.

Books have gatekeepers, publishing houses that put in work to market the book as widely as possible, get it reviewed in newspapers, arrange media appearances.

How many Kindle direct releases are going to get that kind of backing?