07-17-2009, 08:25 AM | #46 | |
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Once the object becomes digital the price is reduced to zero. Digital objects have no inherent value, comparisons to atom-based real-world examples are pointless and do not work. And there's no pretending going on here, 'all' digital works have zero inherent value, they are nothing but zeros and ones re-arranged into a particular order. The audience gives those zero's and ones value, if they deem it right. Creative works aren't any different than anything else, except when they are. You can't digitize an apple or a bowl of Kellog's Cornflakes, you will always have to pay for them at whatever price the market and the producer decide will make them a profit. But when it comes to fiction there's an abundance of digital product. You could stop buying books right now and happily read for the rest of your life without paying anyone anything if you kept it to the digital side of the equation. So that begs the question; in an age of abundance, where there is no scarcity (apart from the false scarcity imposed by DRM) how does an artist make a living? According to Chris Anderson there's a gap appearing between those who are 30+ and those below 30 years of age. One side, still routed in the physical payment model really can't surmount the idea of object=fixed payment, the other side, having grown up in a digital culture that is almost always zero cost, don't understand the idea of digital object=fixed payment. Think of it like this, if I have a choice between two authors (both whom I admire) and one of them offers work for zero cost and the other offers their work for £5, who am I more likely to read first? Who am I more likely to recommend blind to other readers? Who am I more likely to feel an affinity for after the reading is done (even if I didn't like the book) and give a 'donation' or other payment? A whole generation 'expect' free product. From open-source operating systems, to the bands they're growing to love on Myspace and Youtube, they're all offering work for free and foregoing the old payment model. Product=fixed price just doesn't work anymore in the world (apart from those who still think it works, but that won't last very long). And lest we forget your zeroing in on one word to make your whole argument. Fan could just as easily be replaced with 'donator' 'sponsor' 'patron' or 'customer' in my first quoted statement. |
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07-17-2009, 08:33 AM | #47 | |
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07-17-2009, 08:33 AM | #48 | ||
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What I meant was: there is a company that does nothing but offering server space and a way for buyers to buy products. (Compare it a bit with PayPal. I can sell products, by using PayPal. The money goes on my PayPal account and I can then either spend it directly or let it be put on another bank account. If you earn more than a certain amount of money, you have to pay a percentage to PayPal.) An author writes a book and then "uploads" that book to the site, he sets a few settings (TTS enabled yes/no, DRM enabled yes/no, Printing enabled yes/no, pricing, etc). You then buy the book and the money goes directly into the author's account, minus a small percentage (required for maintenance of the site). If the author decides he wants to retract the book, he's free to do so, as he still is owner of the book. |
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07-17-2009, 08:36 AM | #49 | |
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07-17-2009, 08:36 AM | #50 | |
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07-17-2009, 08:38 AM | #51 |
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07-17-2009, 08:40 AM | #52 | |
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07-17-2009, 08:41 AM | #53 |
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07-17-2009, 08:41 AM | #54 | |
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Actually that's a fantastic point you make there. A large swathe of the generation growing up on 'free' don't even want the product when it is 'zero' cost, or they deem the value proposition too low to even partake in reading. Average novel = 80,000 - 100,000 words. Avg Reading Time: 20hrs. There's a whole generation who would consider 20hrs too much time to spend on anything (even video games). We have a whole generation communicating in 140 character Tweets, Instant Messenging in short random, vowel-less bursts. Music, that most universal of all creative arts, is struggling (I'll find you five people right now who don't read on a regular basis, but I'd be hard pressed to find one who doesn't listen to music). A fixed price model in the face of all that competition is ludicrous. |
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07-17-2009, 08:49 AM | #55 | ||
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07-17-2009, 08:53 AM | #56 | |
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Every Wednesday I watch Escapist Magazine's video game review show - Zero Punctuation. I don't pay for that. It's just available for free. But I like the show and I want to show my support so that it continues. There are two ways I do this. I click on their 'advertising' when I visit the site and I buy merchandise. I have two Zero Punctuation shirts, and I'm going to buy a plush imp in the next few weeks. This is the 'value-added' proposition we were talking about. I think writers should be doing the same, whether that's in collectives or by themselves. I know that when I launch my site at the end of this year I'll be offering t-shirts, but the fiction will always be free and before we get started on will I make a living etc, the answer is NO. A big fat NO. And I never expected to either, not with what I write and the stories I prefer. If you're a straight genre writer you'll probably find it a lot easier to maintain your income in the coming years. If you're literary you'll be where you were before all this; small sales, but big prestige. If you're in the middle like me, you're screwed |
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07-17-2009, 09:14 AM | #57 |
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07-17-2009, 09:20 AM | #58 | |
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07-17-2009, 10:47 AM | #59 | |
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Well, just as you write it... (I've no idea how to write down how you pronounce it...) |
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07-17-2009, 10:47 AM | #60 |
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This is a thread I find specially interesting, because I have just changed my approach to payment from readers. Previously I adopted a "shareware" model, asking people to pay a small fee per book if they had enjoyed it. Compared with the colossal number of downloads, the results were meagre.
Having taken advice from Alexandra Erin, I now say that my books are entirely free. In turn I ask readers to support the process that brought them the books by making a donation of their choice. I only made the change earlier this month, but it is interesting that since then not one single donation has been made. My first book was published in 1978, so I belong to a generation of writers who grew up with the old methods. Rotten as they are (from an author's point of view), at least they hold out the possibility of some financial return. Most readers, I suspect, have little idea of the practice and hard work needed to get a foothold in the craft of writing novels; or of the hundreds or even thousands of hours of work that go into a full-length piece. It's a pretty steep gradient to climb, even if you already have a publisher's advance. DRM does not protect intellectual property. It is too easily cracked. Once a book is in digital form there is nothing but the integrity of computer-users to stop it from being replicated, and I think we know how much, taken overall, that is worth. The ebook revolution may bring about the death of professional writing of fiction (and quite a few other genres, too). What you will have instead is a plethora of amateur work, some of which will be worth reading but the majority not -- a bit like blogs are today. I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Much of the output of professional authors has never been worth reading either. And since younger people and many older ones never read a book anyway, authorship is just one of those outdated jobs, like being a blacksmith, which will survive only in niches here and there. |
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