Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
This leads me to the question of what will happen to books in the future. If her generation expects books to be free in the future, who will write them? I believe it was Samuel Johnson who said "only a blockhead writes, except for money". Does that imply that in the future only blockheads will write?
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Must... refrain... from... pointing towards... Smashwords*...
To be fair, there are plenty of free promotional giveaways of stuff every week and one can amass quite a collection of entirely legitimate officially-published offerings (I've got like 2000+ publisher promo giveaways in my Kindle archives obtained over the past year-and-a-half just from frequenting the Deals forum, and several hundred MP3s and first episodes of TV shows just from the iTunes "free song of the week" stuff).
Though I'll admit I don't think that was what the daughter was really talking about.
In any case, it looks like stuff is just moving to smaller and more specialized niche audiences anyway as the market fragments and people are more inclined to go to what specifically appeals to them, rather than stay with what's mass-marketed with a broadly general money-making "appeal".
Sure, there's plenty of the latest NYT bestseller on the darknet, but far fewer of more obscure niche offerings which people would have to seriously hunt for or just break down and pay up to get a decent-quality copy.
And Baen for instance seems to being doing pretty well with the sustaining sales and anecdotally say they've got low piracy rates because their e-books are priced and offered at such reasonable terms that the pirates just don't bother because they see no challenge to it.
* Alternatively, the
Pit of Voles!