GMTonyKosten wrote on 08/12/09 at 13:39:10:
Oh dear! That's a depressing thought!
I like the idea of contacting TWIC and Chess Today, for example, but I simply can't believe anyone would want a ChessPublishing T-shirt or mug, and I'm not even sure I would wear a ChessPub T-shirt. Still, there's no knowing what I might do if I thought the site would make more money!!
Please keep the ideas coming.
Maybe you could offer more functionality for subscribers. Chess theory takes a lot of time to keep up with, so it could be worth hearing what kind of assistance subscribers would wish for.
For example, one idea could be to offer automatically generated individualised repertoire e-books - i.e. subscribers provide a rough tree of what they're playing and when a new game is added that improves for either side in that rep, the user is notified and this game is automatically added to his clickable repertoire-book, which he of course can edit, if the novelty is not to his liking or it causes him to change his preferred line of that branch.
It would of course take a very good php-programmer and some serious investments so I suppose it's not possible yet, but I'm for one is convinced that something like this is the future of chess publishing.
Another more realistic idea for the moment, could be to invite chess authors to update their opening books / suggested repertoires etc on a freelance basis here on chesspub in an easily accessible digital format. - It'll probably require consent by the publishers, but it would most likely lengthen the life span of those published opening books, bring you more subscribers for those new sections, and give an extra income for the authors - so it sounds like an 'everybody wins' idea.
And if that works well, you could start 'publishing' new authors with new ebooks - there must be many titled players who would be tempted to make an ebook = cbh/cbv-format, while a paper edition would require much more work. It wouldn't even cost you anything , if you settle for a percentage from what the authors get - in return for access to chesspub's traffic, a subforum dedicated to each book and perhaps some advice on the making of the ebooks & quality check of the material.