When it comes to monetising digital content - an issue just about every major news organisation is grappling with - the discussion too often both starts and ends at the paywall question. This raises the question that many news outlets may be afraid to truly innovate by looking beyond received models in their quest for revenue.

This could be about to change: the emerging e-book publishing trend is reaching such proportions, thanks to several new publications, that news organisations shouldn't ignore the possibilities it represents. What has undoubtedly given a boost to digital publishing is the appearance of electronic publishing start-ups such as The Atavist and Byliner. Thanks to their success, coupled with Amazon's push with its Kindle Singles series, the conditions for monetising long-form journalism have never been so good.

The New York Observer examined the current state of e-book publishing in a recent thorough article, noting that the length the medium is best suited for fills a gap left by magazine articles and full-length non-fiction books. The prices of e-books publications are low - usually less than $5 - but as most contracts split the revenues 50-50 between the writer and the publisher, already relatively modest sales can bring in significant revenue for both.

The Observer cites many examples of magazines venturing into publishing e-book versions of their articles, either in the original or fleshed-out version. No numbers have been made available, but all seem to discuss the move in positive terms. As e-readers are gaining popularity all the time, The Observer's suggestion that purchasing long-form articles might become as regular as a cup of coffee seems increasingly plausible.

And it's not just the print press, as also web-native publications are trying out e-book publishing. Last week, it was reported that The Huffington Post published its first e-book, and was working on putting out a second one soon. Also OWNI published WikiLeaks: A True Account as an e-book, while Ars Technica decided to sell its exhaustive Mac OS X review as a Kindle e-book, in addition to featuring the review on its website for free.

Charging for content that is also available for free may sound like a plan that is unlikely to work, but there are signs of the opposite: according to Nieman Journalism Lab, Ars Technica's e-book sold 3,000 copies in the first 24 hours. There is also an argument to be made in favour of giving content away for free: it can work as a way to attract readers that wouldn't have heard of the story otherwise. The most interested ones are then able to pay for extra convenience by getting the story as an e-book.

Dan Pacheco wrote on PBS about the untapped potential that e-books present. The growth of the industry - 300 percent year-to-year - alone should be enough to arouse publishers' interest. Pacheco noted that instead of having to create content from scratch, newspapers already have plenty of published and unpublished content that could be put out in the e-book form. (It should be noted, though, that Pacheco is the founder of BookBrewer, an e-book creation and publishing software, so he has vested interest in the matter.)

Will e-book publishing make its way further into news organisations' operations? The best-case scenario would see it forming a component of income - not a silver bullet that solves profitability issues in a go perhaps, but a solid source of revenue nevertheless.

Sources: The New York Observer, Nieman Journalism Lab, PBS
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