07-16-2009, 06:04 PM | #16 | |
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Perhaps I'm just an aging cynic, but people won't pay for what they can get for free. The water analogy isn't quite apt IMO. The water that comes out of spigots and drinking fountains has been castigated as tainted. people are buying "purity" in those plastic bottles, not water. |
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07-16-2009, 06:08 PM | #17 | |
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On your other points, yes and more besides. We're probably going to see subscription based models, advertising, pay-per-chapter, pay to completion, and boutique print-runs (possibly invidualised by the author) and many other ways to monetize fiction, just as we're seeing with music. Not everyone sells their tracks through itunes (and takes a tiny percentage of profits), some do it through Jamendo and Magnatune, some sell CD's or merchandise or tickets to concerts, or any other number of things. The digital age is disruptive. Many people will lose out, and many will gain. But there's not a cat's chance in hell that these big companies can stick with the old product=fixed price model for very long. Just won't happen. |
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07-16-2009, 06:21 PM | #18 | ||
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07-16-2009, 06:59 PM | #19 |
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It may very well be that in the future less people actually will make a living by being creative.
And this is definitely not about talent. It's about writing, singing, playing, drawing the right stuff at the right time for the right audience. If your work will find an audience large enough, enough of the comsumers will acutally buy "something" which is related to your work. This may either be a book or a CD or a concert ticket or a merchandise like a mug or T-shirt. Or anything else. Just expect this to be a tough competition. One choice is to find a job as close as possible to what you would like to do. And hope you earn enough money with it. In the spare time create that what you actually want to create. Right now I'm earning my money by writing short adventure stories for browser game rpgs. My name will never be linked to that work, my name won't appear on any front cover of a paperback. But I'm still writing, and I try to use my free time as effectively as possible for my private projects. If one of them becomes a success some day, fine. If not I still do what I basically want to do. Back to the basic consideration. If digital products will cause a decline in the "market value" of creativity, first the creative minds will leave, then the digital products will vanish. And then the creative minds will return. Hardly anybody actually needs digital products (besides handicapped people maybe). You may read a book, listen to a CD, buy a DVD, go to a concert. You don't really need their digital/downloadable counterparts. I've been into eBooks since 1999, and I noticed two or three years ago that I regained my interests in printed books, also in old vinyl records or actually going to a concert. For me it seems, as convenient as digital products are, they somehow leave a gap; they are not as satisfactory as I would like them to be. |
07-17-2009, 02:16 AM | #20 | |||
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Book A arrives in hardcover. You don't want to buy pbooks anymore, and the publisher refuses to make an ebook. So, you go to the darknet and download a (not so good) copy of that book. You put some time in it to fix it up a bit, this takes (let's say) 3 weeks. After 6 months, the publisher decides that the hardcover isn't making enough money anymore so, he publishes the ebook together with the paperback version. Would you now buy that ebook? I've scanned books myself and I usually fix mistakes while reading it. I doubt I'd buy the ebook of those books. Quote:
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(I generally buy one bottle and keep filling it with tap water until I want to replace the bottle again...) |
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07-17-2009, 02:25 AM | #21 | ||
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I've also bought music that was available free from the artist's site. Crazy I know.. But we do exist. Quote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3809539.stm What people are buying is water in a plastic bottle. What people are being sold is a different matter. |
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07-17-2009, 02:57 AM | #22 | |
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It's much better to buy a sports bottle to drink from and refill as it uses a plastic that is far less likely to break down over time. Cheers, PKFFW |
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07-17-2009, 03:00 AM | #23 | |
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That's why I regularly replace the bottle... And my bottle isn't really exposed to sunlight while standing on my desk. When I go walking I take my metal bottle... (I don't like those sports bottles, they give the water a plasticy taste...) Time to go ontopic again! |
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07-17-2009, 03:51 AM | #24 | |
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07-17-2009, 04:04 AM | #25 |
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I got this from ereaders.nl...
Dutch publishers will never understand the concept of electronic products, I'm afraid... Part of the discussion is the question how publishers should handle books that are sold out... pbooks can be sold out, in which case the rights to the book will fall back to the author automatically. But ebooks can't be sold out, so the rights would never fall back to the author. So, one of the publisher organizations suggested to define a minimum amount of yearly downloads as "sold out"... -------- Oh, that electronic version of that book is sold out! |
07-17-2009, 04:07 AM | #26 |
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I'm afraid I don't see anything wrong with that. Having a clause in your contract with a publisher saying "if sales fall below a certain level, the distribution rights will revert to the author" seems like a good idea. It may indicate that the publisher is doing a poor job.
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07-17-2009, 04:16 AM | #27 | |
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I live in a country with one of the highest penetration of broadband internet, but it seems a lot of people still don't know what internet is... |
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07-17-2009, 04:19 AM | #28 | |
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07-17-2009, 04:38 AM | #29 | |
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Oh, and the solution is simple... (as it always is when you're not really involved!) The author just keeps his rights and do away with publishers (for ebooks that is) completely. A percentage of every ebook that gets sold will go to the author not by way of the publisher, but by way of the ebookstore... Last edited by Sweetpea; 07-17-2009 at 04:40 AM. |
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07-17-2009, 05:20 AM | #30 | |
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