Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I don't want T-shirts and fridge magnets with the author's name on it. I want to read a book. You might as well charge me for the book, because if you depend on my buying a lot of kitschy c**p instead of paying for the book, you won't get a dime.
There really isn't much else to say, is there? You don't believe the world operates on capital.
Many of us say you're wrong. Even those who say you are right mostly work for a living and pay for their food and rent, thereby proving you wrong.
Until you create a world where everyone gets everything for free, your idea of giving away creative works for free is simply unworkable.
Face it. Or die.
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It's not really about what you want, because frankly the individual author going it alone is a dying market as are all those who pony up for digital product at the get go. It's about what will sell and what is acceptable in market. It's about community and branding and all that other marketing research that you have to acknowledge if you want to sell. If the market is trending towards free with ancillary or extended products for profit, then you don't just ignore that market because it's not what you expect. Capitalism works, largely, on perceptions. You NEED this useless product because it does A, B, C even if it doesn't do A, B, C. It's also highly influenced by societal trends, hence the rolling success of terrible writers who have a good PR campaign behind them. Monetary value is gauged by what the market will bare, but when the market is digital, you have to play the game a little differently.
Most of the big websites work on the 5% rule. They give away a free version of their service and charge a premium for the premium service. They work on the theory that 5% of their audience will pay the premium. That 5% then covers the running costs for the rest of the site and the free versions for everyone else. Flickr famously works under this model.
So, back to economics, if supply is infinite (or perceived as infinite) then you have to find a way to restrict supply to add value, or extend value to increase demand. The companies thought DRM would create this artificial restriction of supply and creation of value, but it did not, because digital can't be artificially restricted. The internet as an entity, routes around any blocks such as DRM and sees them as the infection they are. So you're left with a choice in a capitalist economy, if your main product has a zero perceived value, is abundant and does not conform to the old supply side economic model, what to do?
The only sensible model that's been espoused is that created recently by indie game developers, albeit slightly modified for the book world.
First you need to build community, then to keep that community you need to add value that sharing can't add (but I believe that sharing is the best thing for any writer or any creative who wants to gain an audience). You need to have something that drives the economics. Partly, it's good will.
I like this author because he writes what I like, he doesn't have DRM, he gives his stuff away for free etc so I want to support this author. It's here where you really grab people economically, in the willing-to-pay to support the endeavour. But not through donations, because there will always be a taint associated, a block that associates donation with charity and no author wants to be a charity case. So you extend, you diversify in reaction to the burgeoning markets and societal attitudes. You provide extended extras on the pay versions, you provide t-shirts and ancillary products like plushys or personalised commissioned short stories as ways for people to support you. You give the extra-value to what has essentially become valueless (the digital product). You give that extra to the communities that you build but all the while you keep your basic product (the stories) free and available to all - and you're right this isn't just economics for me, but a belief that
Reading is a Right, not some by-product of the profit motive. To that end I like the idea that after X amount of time or X amount of money made in sales on a book that the book is given back to the Public Domain where it can do most benefit for all, even if that all means someone else profiting.
Anybody can write, and anybody can sell that writing on-line now. It's those that extend, those that adapt and create community and involvement that will truly flourish. If it's just about making money, you can write copy for Viagra companies about wang solidity that will pay more and take less time and effort.
Adapt. Believe. Flourish.
tl:dr How to sell a cow even though the milk is free.