Cites & Insights as HTML: Final weekly report

It’s been a week since the most recent update on the HTML challenge–that is, my request for people who find Cites & Insights worthwhile and want to read it in HTML form to pay a modest sum to support C&I.

Today is the deadline.

This time, I’ll offer the results in an homage to Mastercard:

Times essays from C&I 13.1 have been viewed as HTML to date:

212 and 118 respectively.

Times essays from C&I have been viewed as HTML this year:

More than 12,000.

Times essays from C&I were viewed as HTML in 2012:

132,7621 [for a total of 1,121,699 since those essays were introduced]

Apparent economic value of C&I essays as HTML:

Worthless.

That is: Nobody has been willing to pay even $10 to keep HTML essays going. Not one person. Not one payment. Not one sale of a C&I annual.

A wise librarian acquaintance recently said to me, not in these words, “Don’t do any library-related writing that you don’t find amusing unless you’re paid up front: Otherwise you’ll just be disappointed.”

The next issue of C&I will be out soon. It’s fair to assume that, barring a sudden burst of activity within the next few hours, it will not have HTML essays. Nor will any that follow.

For now, the ones that have already appeared will still be available: It’s really not worth the trouble to get rid of all the links in the C&I contents page. But I am now better informed as to the apparent economic value of this work. Thanks for the clarity of the message.

[Those few who answered both last year’s C&I survey and an earlier one might have wondered why I didn’t ask about willingness to pay this time around. That’s because it became clear the last time that most people were disingenuous in their answers–that “willing to pay” did not, with two exceptions, translate into “will pay.” So why bother to ask?]

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