That's not to say that the Web is unimportant, but I'd like to see Web publishers start to think more seriously about what e-mail could do for them. They should have recognized that e-mail was the obvious preferred method of push. Contrast that with the typical Web site, which if users are expected to return regularly will have to remember to come back. With millions of Web sites vying for users' attention, it's naive to expect that. One of the most compelling cases for e-mail over the Web is a financial one.
People read text.
Of course, it's not so simple. Like any good e-mail expert, the author spends a good chunk of his book talking about the evils of spamming. But while any halfway intelligent online publisher will know not to send out spam, it's easy to act in ways that may not seem like spamming to you but do to the recipient. There are many rules of etiquette to e-mail publishing, and to be successful you've got to play nice. There's too much to go into here, but the book covers etiquette and publisher behavior issues in much detail.