Important announcement: Seriously considering closing The eBook Community group

Everyone,

In early January 1996, I started the eBook Community (TeBC) mailing
list/forum. Since then, TeBC has had a remarkable run, and for a
number of years was the premier mailing list to discuss all things
e-book.

However, nothing is forever -- everything has a beginning, and an
ending. That's the natural order of things. The last couple of years
we've seen discussion in this group trickle off to essentially
nothing.

And the group poll I started a few months ago (which included a couple
group announcements, see

   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/surveys?id=2739026  )

has had disappointing results. The poll shows that the actual number
of people who actively and eagerly follow this group is quite small,
less than a hundred, despite the indicated number of subscribers
(about 3400).

In addition, the number of notables in the digital publishing industry
who follow this group is even smaller -- most of the notables now
follow and contribute articles and comments to various blogs
(particularly TeleRead), and to the private (by invitation only) and
quite thriving Reading 2.0 list founded and run by Peter Brantley.

Digital publishing professionals have only so much time they can
commit to follow the digital publishing "community channels", and it
is obvious that they have already committed their time elsewhere.

Thus, I am contemplating closing this group in a fashion similar to
how John Mark Ockerbloom did for the Book People list: simply pulling
the plug and not supporting/endorsing any successor group.

However, I will consider turning over the reins of this group so it
may continue uninterrupted, provided that a group of five or more
people *formally* band together into a "steering committee" and
propose to me, in writing, a cogent vision and marketing plan to
reorganize and revitalize this group.

Note that I use the word "consider", since I am pessimistic anything
can revitalize this group because most online communities have moved
over to web-based social networking sites, blogs, and forums.

Also, it is important that this group remain independent of any one
company in the digital publishing universe, so I will not turn over
control of this group to any committee that is mostly corporate-
influenced by one or a small number of commercial interests. This does
not mean the committee may not include any commercial interests -- it
may -- but I'd like the committee to be fairly balanced and broad-
based, to assure the independence of this group.

And of course, I will assess if the proposed revitalization plan will
likely attract the digital publishing notables to join, follow, *and*
contribute to discussion. If I don't see in the proposal a good chance
of that happening, I'll turn down the proposed revitalization plan and
simply close doors.

And, please, do not plead with me, in public or private, to
reconsider. Instead, if you really would like to see this group
continue uninterrupted, then work to bring together a
reorganizational steering committee as described above.

If I don't see a viable reorganizational steering committee formed
within two weeks from today, I'll start the process to close this
group. If an acceptable committee does form, I'll give it two more
weeks to send me a proposed revitalization plan.

If I do close this group, which now looks more likely than not, I
will send out a "goodbye" message similar to what John Mark Ockerbloom
did for Book People.

Jon Noring
TeBC founder and administrator




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