This is really fascinating. Great article.
I think fiddling with paper->web (or something else digital) and improving that workflow sounds like fun.
Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
101–109 of 109 posts
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks that's a great idea. It's a little more work than putting the job up on oDesk though, as I'd need to implement some mechanism for people to edit and update, and for me to vet it. The truth is, having scanned and OCRed it all, I'm sick of the sight of it for the time being so I haven't proofread it. I will get onto this. And your suggestion about moving the images around is a great one - I'm conscious that thes…
You could simply pay a bored technically-minded university student such as myself to do the work :)
Put some contact details in your profile and I'll be able to contact you.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#103I'd welcome any suggestions on where to go next - it's a bit of a fire-and-forget side project, but I'd still like to get it as good as possible before I leave it to stew for 2013.
I don't know what your ad income is -- and I'm not asking -- but just looking at the HowIDidIt page, this is a book that screams for you to redo it for the iPad in iBooks Author. It's exactly the kind of book that app was made for. EDIT: And btw, eBooks are my thing, so you really should listen and do it. "The Classic Back in Print for the Tablet (or iPad) Age."
I think this is looking for an iPad app too. Each section could be a low cost in-app purchase. Add a preview for each section -- perhaps an article or two from each section, for free.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#104Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#105"I can only imagine that going up as Google starts to recognise this as quality content and not just content farm rubbish." Uh, no. It will go up as a function of traffic volume, so as your site starts to rank higher organically you'll see more revenue but the amount paid isn't a function of the 'quality' of the web site, its a function of what people bid to be there and what they pay per click. Note that if it goes…
The OP did have an advantage that not every archivist benefits from: permission from the copyright holders.
are you sure of this ? - How does one go about acquiring such a copyright?
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#106this is awesome - I'm curious though - aren't you theoretically violating the copyright of the actual author?
This is essentially a derivative work. And the blog post specifically states he had the permission of the holder who was a family friend.
Now having the permission not in writing even (especially?) of friends and family is generally not a good idea, but not exactly the end of the world either.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disqus loads in after page load, so it shouldn't add load time to the content. Also keep in mind that comments add SEO (and can be extremely valuable for this reason alone). Plus I don't think it's such a bad idea from a reader's perspective. Seems like the worse case scenario is that no one uses it, and the best case scenario people are able to contribute to improvements.
If the comments load in after the page loads, crawlers are unlikely to see them, so you're not getting much SEO benefit. Worst case is off-topic comments that take time to remove, significantly worse than nobody using it.
They actually have a deal with google where all of their comments are directly indexed and attributed to the sites (likely similar to canonical references).
It used to be a problem a couple years ago, and sites would then use the API to load in comments and include them server-side. Obviously this wasn't ideal, but it's a solved problem now.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#108I'd welcome any suggestions on where to go next - it's a bit of a fire-and-forget side project, but I'd still like to get it as good as possible before I leave it to stew for 2013.
Paragraphs would be nice. And proofreading.
For example: http://www.howacarworks.com/articles/removing-the-oil-pump
"On en gines where" " If yot are in "
No wonder Google doesn't pick it up.
Re: Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website
#109You inspired me!
This weekend I did my own book to website conversion: http://recipesforseafood.com/
I'll keep you posted as to what $$$ it generates (if any)...
Cheers,
Marcus