In May, I wrote a post about whether or not The Globe and Mail should adopt an eMarketer style 
content marketing strategy. In that blog, I suggested that the popular Canadian news publication should sell short, downloadable eBooks – especially for its business and technology readers. This could potentially help to attract new readers and supplement revenue shortfalls from paper subscriptions and advertising.
Well, it looks like The Globe and Mail is, indeed, experimenting with that format and is testing it out with its Report on Business (ROB) publication. I just downloaded “The Lunch” for $2.99 CAD which is now being sold as an “eBook featuring lunchtime interviews with the world’s top business minds” and is a collection of the most popular interviews from the Globe’s Report on Business column.
I have to say that I love this concept because gives legs to stories from The Globe and Mail’s ROB archives which readers may not have previously seen. I really hope that this format takes off as it will provide a new revenue stream for the news publication. In addition, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, I hope that The Globe and Mail continues to experiment and tries offering deeper analysis reports for its popular technology, finance and politics sections for use by business and political analysts.
What do you think? Could custom eBooks and reports help to save the newspaper industry? Please share you perspective in the comments section below.