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Originally Posted by stonetools
As far as the public is concerned, there is no perceived abundance. The general public doesn't know or care that there is a vast pool of free and near free stuff available on the Internet. What the public wants is the professionally curated and produced stuff, written by writers that they are familiar with through exposure in bookstores , traditional marketing, libraries or recommendations by intimates.
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John Locke's first million sales say you're wrong.
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The public believes that books produced by such writers are much more likely to deliver quality entertainment than unknown " indie" writers-so much so that the general public is not even aware that we are living in an era of "abundance. "
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I think you have a skewed concept of "the general public." In my mind, that includes the several-million people who spend time reading blogs and hanging out at Reddit and Fark and Livejournal, who are entirely aware that the internet is *clogged* with interesting free stuff. They may default to gatekeeper-selected reading materials most of the time, because it's worth paying someone else to winnow through the selection of what's available... but they aren't averse to other sources, and are actively involved in telling other people that you can find endless free-and-cheap entertainment online.