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Originally Posted by elcreative
Nice selective quoting as is usual around here... ignore everything relating to comments concerning a substantial number of authors and actually making a living... ah well... call it "arts & crafts", that makes it all right...  |
Would it sound better if I said "making a living from one's art, or one's craft?"
I'm not talking about kitschy home decorations. People whose career of choice is creative work have always had a struggle to get paid for it.
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And if you aren't getting money for it then it is an "expense" as you're cannibalising your own possible sales... every book you give away is a definite sale not made...
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No, every book given away is *not* necessarily a lost sale. No more than every book bought at a yard sale is a lost sale. If the person *wasn't going to buy,* or wasn't going to buy at a higher price, then giving them a free book is a benefit--they might buy your next one, or recommend it to friends.
None of us got to love reading by paying full-price for new books. Almost none of us discovered our favorite authors by paying full-price for one of their books, new.
The idea that every reader is, or should be, a full-price buyer, is a new and ridiculous one. It's like assuming everyone would buy a new car if you banned carpooling and giving rides to friends.
I don't know how it plays out for everyone. I know that:
1) My book budget (ebook budget; I don't read print) is larger this year than it has been in my entire life, and
2) I don't buy fiction that costs more than $6, or has DRM.
Authors who bring their price down to $5 have a chance at getting my dollars; authors who sell at $14, don't. I don't care how many layers of overhead there are between the author and the sale; I don't buy books to support publishing houses--I buy to support *authors*, and if publishing houses would like a bit of that money, they need to fit into my buying limitations.
(Which, agreed, are far from universal. Shrug. I am not invested in convincing anyone that the Agency model is doomed--I have access to enough excellent reading material to last the rest of my life, whether the Agency publishers triple their output or fold tomorrow. If, however, the Agency publishers would like my *children's* ebook dollars in a few years, they'd better figure out how to convince me they're worth looking at.)