I think both of you are right. I paid $45 for a book on how to make pack saddles for my burros and it was well worth it. I don't know how many the author has sold, but he output it to a PDF and copied it to a CDROM and mailed it to me.

There are a lot of books I prefer to have in a digital format. It's nice, for example, to be able to print out a map and directions from a guidebook, or pages and diagrams from a car repair manual, and copying code from tech books is a great thing for coders, but I prefer some books in a print format.

Either way, it is easier than it's ever been to self publish and that's been a real boon for me as an end user.

I've helped create several publications designed for output on PDF files and other multimedia platforms for delivery on CDROM. It's really not very hard to add hyperlinks and sound and video to these with Adobe's Acrobat software and this can add a lot of value that traditional print media cannot deliver.

I'm kind of surprised that it hasn't become more common with self publishers, but I suspect that has to do with how quickly the early generations of this medium became obsolete and how fast the internet has been able to incorporate multimedia.

But the old fart that made that pack saddle book was on to something. It's a niche product and he only delivered it on CDROM by snail mail.

Of course, you could use DVDs now, or even email it or let a user download a file from a web server, but truly, a PDF file delivered on a CDROM or from a webserver is pretty easy and inexpensive for anyone to do.

Marketing is a horse of a different color and not something I've spent much time on.

Does Amazon list self published digital books? If so, that'd be the ticket I'd think.