August 22, 2000

Amazon.com moved retailers to the web, and disintermediated retail inventory. SimonSays.com is a publisher (Simon & Schuster) on the Web. Stephen King’s an author on the Web. You can buy his book from him directly, and online. He’s releasing The Plant in installments. Each installment will be about a dollar. That’s pretty cheap for an online book, but then, he only has server storage and tracking costs and all that. He says he’ll stop writing the next part if people don’t pay enough. Payment rate is over 75% so far. This is an experiment to watch.

The Economist has an article on The failure of new media – about how the Internet’s a disappointment. In fact they have lots of articles on the Internet.