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Ask HN: Would you pay for it- Business Book Summaries?

6 points by jasonlbaptiste ↗ HN
I've been reading a ton of business books lately and summarizing them just to take notes. I therefore thought it would be useful to do this on a more consistent level like 5 a week and put them online for a monthly fee (9.99 unlimited access). My thought is: this would be useful to people who want to get the main points of a lot of books but don't have the time to read them all. For the really interesting ones: they'll then go and read the whole thing.

Consider this a super minimum viable product.

14 comments

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aarlo
My guess is that it's hard to charge just for info, especially if you're not well known...I wouldn't pay.
jasonlbaptiste
yeah part of that's my worry, but people certainly do pay for information on the web. especially if it saves them time (value prop here). getabstract does this, but they're kinda pricey.
JacobAldridge
For me, there's not enough value here to put my hand in my pocket. If I want a review of a specific book, I can search and find them, and to discover books I have blogs, friends and sites like HN where many are reviewed, discussed, or recommended.

Having said that, if you've already done the ground work, is it possible to pull together a website with free content and grab some affiliate fees? Not as much potential, but a super minimum viable revenue source?

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jasonlbaptiste
That's my other thought to be honest. I might just start posting them regularly. It's a fairly valuable audience but more than anything I'm sure I'd meet some good people.

Quick calcs: 1,000 views, 2% end up buying book, 5% commission, $15 avg price = $15 cpm. Not bad actually. Throw in other business related ads on top of it.

JacobAldridge
I figure there's beer money ideas, letterbox money ideas, and fuck you money ideas. This seems like a nice little beer money idea right now, and who knows what it might evolve into.
jasonlbaptiste
Yeah, Im thinking of just posting them on personal site. The value wouldn't come in the form of money. I'm pretty busy with Genevine but this would be a good suplement to blog posts.
john_lewin
I've paid for {getabstract} before, and use it somewhat frequently now that my company pays for it. Its long been my view that a good business book is about 5-10 pages of solid insight with another 10 of market research validating it -- and another 300 pages of B.S.

But for $10/month a summary wont work -- you need to get the meat of the idea and present it as convincingly as the book. That kind of quality @ a rate of 5 books a week? I'd be sceptical of someone saying they could do that at a rate of 1 book a month unless they were full time at it.

kareemm
Coles / Clif notes built large businesses off of this idea, so I suspect the answer is yes.

my buddy runs PhilosophersNotes.com. no idea what his traction is like but i suspect he's doing pretty well.

jasonlbaptiste
Philosophernotes is REALLY well done. A one time fee is another option. You could also do the mixergy route of free for 1 week after posting. Archives are paid.
davidw
I'm trying another take on this idea: http://www.squeezedbooks.com

The idea being that, instead of having a walled garden, to open everything up and try and create a community around it, that is interested in discussing the ideas presented. Reading something passively is fine, but when you talk about it, it often brings you to another level of understanding.

I would be very open to formally sharing a large chunk of this project with the right person to help get it off the ground; let's talk.

shedd
Soundview (http://www.summary.com/) has been doing this for quite a while. Their summaries are decent and make them available in a number of formats.

They do a lot of mainstream business books - there may be an opportunity in offering this product for niche markets or special focus areas.