Slashdot Mirror
Sharing Doesn't Hurt
Freeptop writes "Here's a fun followup to an old slashdot article: Eric Flint just posted another Prime Palaver article on the Baen Free Library. In this article of his, he talks about the effects of posting his books for free on the library. Specifically, he uses his own royalty statements to show that sales for his books have gone up whenever he has made them available for free. As usual, Mr. Flint writes a well thought out article demonstrating the pointlessness of encrypting e-books, and this time, he has proof to back up his assumptions."
You provide your customers with a free, easy (and legal) way of previewing your products, and they feel compelled to buy them. Who would have thought?
Why? In most cases, simply because they don't really know anything about the writer and aren't willing to spend $7 to $28 just to experiment. So, they keep buying those authors they are familiar with.
But wait- that means that authors would have to start... writing better... what about... how come....? Pffft, all this "library" does is promote healthy competition and publicize good works by unknown authors, which effectively ruins the monopoly held by the big names in the business. So actually, this library with its free postings does lower sales... of works that aren't as good.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I have been a subsriber at Baen for almost two years now. It's great to get books before they are published, cheaper than for paper, and I always have something to read (with my PDA).
They need more press, I can't think of any other publisher that has done as much to promote unencrypted and even free ebooks.
That unlike most consumer goods, like VCRs or portable radios, is that when you don't like them within 30 days you bring them back to the store and get a refund (most of the time). Sure, there's sometimes conditions, like you have to keep the box, but that's reasonable.
Why is this not true for books/cds/software, because they assume that you copied them. This is what needs to change. If I hear a song on the radio that I like, go and buy the CD and the whole rest of the CD sucks, then I should be able to bring it back to the store and get a refund.
Free Mac Mini
Astralwerks figured this out a long time ago . Matador seems to have figured it out a little more recently.
.. hm.. i don't remember how long exactly, but it's at *least* five or six years now... even if the number reached for that estimate was totally baseless, it would be really fun if the number started showing up in news articles about "mp3 is ruining record companies profits!" or "software piracy, which is no more prevalent than it was in 1983, is ruining software companies profits!" or whatever, as a little side note "Astralwerks records estimates that their yearly profits are x percent higher as a result of the fact they give some amount approaching half of everything they publish away for free.."
I really wish there were some sorts of vague estimates on the level of record sales that can be attributed directly to the "here are some URLs where you can download full realaudio tracks and/or music videos from albums we just released" mailing list that Astralwerks has been running for
..there is a CRUCIAL difference between what this author did, the Smashing Pumpkins asked for on "Machina 2: The Machines of the Gods" (their last album which was released as 50 acetates to good friends and one Chicago radio station which MP#'d it and let it roll), the way the Grateful Dead dealt with bootlegs (trade 'em, don't sell 'em I think was the gist of it) and what a lot of file-traders do with Metallica, Boobie Spears, et al.
This guy owned the copyright to his works and chose to share. I like that. Now, the labels and/or the artists (depending on who owns the copyright) chose NOT to share.
Now, I've never used any such services, mainly because, quite frankly, most US music sucks thanks to the fact we have only five real record labels, and I prefer my criminality to be more significant, like d/l'ing DeCSS or otherwise defeating copyright controls.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I imagine it'll be something about how it doesn't matter what happens for BOOKS, and how they plan to keep trying to shut down all the file sharing programs anyway. Afterall, ACTUAL profit is less important than the CONCEPT that you're giving away your product (intellectual property, you know) to whoever wants it.
/.ers) gets it?
How many times will this have to be proven before somebody (other then
No sig for you.
He, the content producer, has chosen to share his copyrighted material.
I mean, the sample size is pretty small - one book. It's promising to see this happening, but I hesitate to jump to the end result of "it works". Then again, that's books and the hot topic of discussion isn't about books.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
I guess my point is that this probably doesn't apply to music.
"The ideas are free... but the median can be charged for."
So give away books that are really good, or ones that really suck. It's just the ones in the middle people have to pay for.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
Series.
Most books I (and others I've spoken with) really enjoy tend to be parts of a series of novels. Trilogies, etc.
If you really want to avoid obscurity, make your first book as free as possible, sell it on the cheap, give the text away freely on the internet in every conceivable format, etc. Then sell the rest of the books via traditional sales methods.
Get 'em addicted, then jack up the cost. Hey, it works. Ask your local drug dealer. (What, you don't think books are addictive??!?)
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Even if the music companies are lying about everything else music sales are down and the actual reasons people are giving is that they download their music for "free" now instead of buying it. Yes, I've seen the survey results from the inside.
Was "Because the music you industry slimeballs publish sucks ass" one of the survey options?
Just asking...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Think of all those textbooks you bought (or will buy) in college. How many of those would have you have laid out money for if you could have gotten them for free? I'll bet your answer wasn't "All of them".
This may work for a fraction of books that are written, but it won't work for all of them. And anyone who bases policy on ONE datapoint deserves the lynching they'll get when they're proved wrong.
My basic point is that this guy is getting free advertising by releasing the book for free, which is resulting in some more sales than he would have gotten if nobody had ever heard of him...But the situation is much different when you're talking about an established very well-known author..And the same goes for music. MP3s given away for free by small bands may increase their market..But does anyone hear Britney Spears for the first time on MP3 and think wow, that's great..lets go buy the album? Of course not..And the the RIAA/other publish associations know this, and will quickly discount this guy's story.
The only issue I have with this is that the vast majority of us have grown up buying books and CDs, so even when there are free digital versions available we still like the old physical copy. I'm not sure whether this will be true of future generations who will have grown up with digital versions and may not like the physical copy better. If that's the case, ten or twenty years from now all the arguments about file-trading being good for sales may no longer be true.
Bite the hand.
The fact that his sales have gone up when he makes his ebooks available for free should not be taken as a green light to pirate ebooks (or anything else.)
The copyright holders have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and it is not for consumers to decide the distribution method for them.
We should instead try to educate people. If there is a business model that allows one to give a product away and still make a descent living I'm sure that a lot of us would be interested.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I read "On Basilisk Station" by David Weber (also in the free library). I was immediately hooked, and ended up buying the rest of the series. That's 7 books purchased, when I got one for free.
I think Weber did pretty well by me, and now I keep an eye out for other books of his. This is an author I had never even heard of, before I ran across the Baen Free Library.
I'm slowly working through the rest of the free library. I haven't seen anything else that really grabbed yet, but no doubt I will end up spending some more cold, hard, cash.
I'll purchase the electronic versions where available, because they are cheaper and in a non-proprietary format. I have a Rocket e-book reader, but never purchased books for that because I didn't want to be locked into a single reader device.
Rock on Baen!
Most people prefer the deadtree version, so they might download the e-book and see if they like it, but ultimately I think they buy the paper version to actually read it. This is different from CD's and DVD's since those you can enjoy listening and watching right after you download them. I know a lot of people buy the CD's they have downloaded if they like them, but I am also sure that there are many more who do not.
It is about profit. If the publishing industy (music, film, book) thought for a second that they could squeeze more profit from opening up their content (or not contolling it so much) they would be all over it like a wet blanket. Until it can be proven with hard evidence that they can, they will continue to try to contol the content any way they can.
my $0.02
Reading entire novels on your computer screen will never be as comfortable as curling up on the couch or bed.
People start reading Eric Flints books online, get tired of the computer screen, like the book and purchase it.
Then they comfortably read the book via the aforementioned places.
This won't work successfully for all medium like music as has already been demonstated.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Bootlegs are illegal by nature, something being distributed that should not be. The Dead did not condone bootlegs. They let people tape their concerts, and distribute and trade those recordings free of charge.
a ding/
(no hyperlinks for the goat-weary)
GD's taping policy: http://www.dead.net/hotline_info/NEW_DOCUMENTS/tr
A great source of related information: htttp://www.etree.org/legal.html
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Read the short stories on this site. There's going to be one for each element when he's done.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Reading the article is still too hard for you I see
Nor can this be explained, as the sharp rise in sales of Mother of Demons perhaps can, as the result of me becoming better known as an author. David Drake, not me, is listed as the lead author of An Oblique Approach-and Dave has been a very well known SF author for twenty years.
Unlike a normal retailer, you know that they specialise in a specific genre (science fiction/fantasy). Hence the success rate of actually finding something (if you fit this segment) is actually quite high.
... some hint of the size (can be an ALTTEXT), and perhaps links to discussion forum (think if they come across a blockbuster like Nuromancer). As a personal plug, I would suggest people read Earth Web, there's some ideas on creating a market for ideas, putting monetary thresholds on accepting unknown email (they pay you to read it!), and blackmarketing in information. While the ideas are not particularly new, the way they are considered in a social setting does give some clues as to whether they would be accepted or not.
So what is their business? I would guess it is to specialise in a category and make their brand (trademark) imply a certain level of quality and endorsement. I know that when I go scanning along the book spines along store shelves, if I spot their symbol, I recognise what it means and take the time to read the jacket and guage the likelihood I would enjoy the rest of it.
People forget that one of the reason to read is to enjoy/explore/engage. Curl up in bed on a cold night with a favorite. Look for new ideas or a new prespective on life. Give a book to a friend to argue the issues. When the DRM or purchasing hassles get in the way of this, it merely increases the barriers to actually using their service.
I would suggest some improvements for their eBooks
LL
Books are simply different than music. Most Slashdot readers would love to have their music in MP3 (or OGG or whatever) format, but would NOT want to have all of their books in e-book format. Why? E-books are harder on the eyes to read, and this is a huge point. Your ears on the other hand can not tell the difference between the type of media music is recorded on (as long as the MP3 is a reasonable quality recording). So there is no value added by owning a CD over an MP3 copy, as there is with owning a paper book over an e-book.
So while I think his story is nice, it does not translate to a good reason to make music freely available online to increase sales.
Mark
just like music, this only holds true for works which would normally sell below a certain threshold.
the market rules for an unknown indie rock band are not the same as for metallica - the indie rock band will earn sales by exposure, metallica will lose them through pirating.
same mechanism, different results.
Indie rock lives! b-side!
Because, you see, for some reason reading a book in the same room with our SO counts as "quality time together"; but reading the same book online counts as "he's obsessed with that damn computer."
Point well taken. There certainly is a difference between an artist offering up his/her works and having them forcibly taken.
However, this article points to the stupidity of the publishing industry (and by extension, the MPAA/RIAA)rather than the illegality of services like Napster.
File-sharing could be a boon to these guys if they would just pull their heads out of their asses. Rather than hurting sales, file sharing has been demonstrated to help it (small sample, but it's certainly far more evidence than the MPAA or RIAA can provide). Instead, they push for anti-copying legislation (CBDTPA).
It's just so pathetically ironic: in their attempts to stop piracy, they push more people into seeking illegal alternatives (who wants to pay $30 for a crippled CD when the good tracks are available online for free; no encryption is uncrackable).
And the very thing that they're fighting is the one thing that could save them. As I see it, the internet will leave them in the dust if they don't stop fighting it. Non-mainstream, quality artists will begin bypassing the MPAA/RIAA for internet alternatives. Then things will change.
Aw, hell, who am I kidding? A CBDTPA type-bill will pass, and free will equal illegal.
Extreme optimism and extreme pessimism in the same post? I better get my head checked, I may have schizophrenia,
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.
he sucks :-) I say that as someone that bought "The Philosophical Strangler" in e-book form just last week, and didn't make it past the first few chapters. It read like he had once heard about Pratchet, in passing, and was baseing his writing style on that. Really weak jokes, stuff that is supposed to be funny (Look! A guy kills people, and has intelligent conversations at the same time! har har), and a horrible "first-person" telling (Then, I walked past the place where John was concieved, but I'm thirsty, so I won't tell you about the rest of it.). It was exceedingly lame...
Anyways, this is slightly OT, as TPS is not available for free (or I would have previewed and saved myself $4) but I don't begrudge the money, as this is a sweet idea, and I am hoping it takes off. Whew, speaking of bad writing, checkout *that* run-on...
pointlessness of encrypting e-books
It's simple, really. They encrypt e-books so that they will be able to use the DMCA on anyone that dares reverse the encryption, regardless of whether or not the reversal was for piracy or not. Can you say "Dmitry Sklyarov"?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Saying that this experience proves that ebooks don't work is adding insult to injury.
Do you believe in death after life?
I hate to say it, but Flint lost billions of dollars by posting that book for free. Sure he made some money, but he would have made _so_ much more had he not posted the book in the Baen Library!
Wasn't this the RIAA's argument when the figures showed that CD sales were actually up during the time Napster was operating?
It seems that "old media" (ie: books publishers) is recognizing this fact a lot faster than newer media (ie: movie and music publishers). I recently finished my first book for New Riders (see www.brendonwilson.com/projects/jxta), and they not only allowed me to post the draft chapters when I asked, but even suggested posting the final version!
This has apparently been accepted by New Riders lately for a few books. My acquisition editor, Stephanie Wall, has done this for about a dozen books, including the Zope book. According to her, New Riders has also come to the same conclusion: offering free online versions of books doesn't hurt the publisher's physical book sales. After all, if someone is crazy enough to read the entire thing off a monitor or print it off, it's doubtful they would have bought the book anyway.
O'Reilly has also taken to doing something similar with its Open Books Project.
Of course, the question is how long this phenomenon will last once we have display technology that allows us to take these electronic books with us in a form indistinguishable from a normal paper book...
I love books a lot. I have more books than I have shelfspace for. They are crammed into every bit of spare space in three different rooms. My wife and daughter are just as bad. Actually, my wife is worse than me because she will buy the same book in two different languages.
Putting a book online will not prevent me from buying a real paper version of the book. It might get me interested in it enough to buy it.
As for Stephen King's experiment. He went about it the wrong way. Replacing a book with an electronic copy just isn't going to work. I can't lay in bed on a lazy Sunday afternoon and read an ebook. I can't bring it along when I'm going somewhere where I know there will be a wait (e.g. doctor's office) or when I go in that little room with so much privacy.
Sometimes I go through my shelves without anything in mind and run across a book I haven't read in years. It's like bumping into an old friend. You just don't get the same feeling browsing through a directory listing.
-- Will program for bandwidth
As a counter-point, I'd bring up Stephen King's experiment, where he allowed free download of his book and asked for a tiny donation in return. Very few of the people who downloaded the book paid for it and the project was scrapped.
Alright, let's look at the comparison:
Baen: Here, have these books for free. They're lesser known authors but we think that you'll enjoy them. Or if you want new titles, we have a pretty cheap subscription deal.
King: I'm going to try this e-book thing. Since my time is too valuable to just give the work away for free, I'm asking that you (after downloading the book) send me a tiny donation. You know, just a way of saying, "Thanks".
Sure, huge similarities there. One offers hassle-free books (or a $15/month subscription deal for "front list", new books) where what you get is either outright free or the traditional pay upfront, versus "oh if you like this inconvenience yourself to send me a buck". I'm sure that's similar enough that consumer preferences, such as wanting simplicity in the sale process won't distort your figures.
Think about it-- wasn't shareware a flash in the pan marketing method? As long as people could only easily trade files on SneakerNet, shareware piracy didn't get too bad. Nowadays though, the modern Internet makes it easy to distribute warez (what with P2P and easy to setup hhtp/ftp servers). And that's a fact every media format faces. Right now, most of them are arguing for stronger control. On the other hand, I'm quite glad to see Baen (literally) take the wind from the sails of those who argue that "piracy causes lost sales".
Do you like Japanese imports?
I tend to call this the DOOM model, since id used it for Wolfenstein/DOOM/Quake 1. Give away the first episode free, charge for the complete game (or in book terms series).
;)
Id is a company with annual revenues of over 1 million dollars per employee, so they must be doing something right.
O'Reilly can't really say if it's a statistically sigificant advantage, but the opposite hypothesis, that it might hurt sales, sure ain't true!
--dave (the 2nd author) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
This is the only one that he gave information on
If you look at the library itself (www.baen.com/library) you'll see lots of authors have agreed to this, including Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle, David Weber (The Honor Harrington books are one of Baen's main lines), David Drake. Also as part of their free samples I've seen sections from Spider Robinson and a few other people where they give you the first 6 or so chapters of the book
Also, Stephen King's case used encryption, which is commented on in the article as being a flat-out bad idea. Never make it hard for the public to use your product if you can help it.
The Baen Library is an excellent experiment - it involves giving away free books, and also a $10/month subscription service where you preview rough drafts and new books up to 3 months before they are published.
It's not just one guy putting his books online and giving them away because he can't get published, it's an attempt to work with the public, rather then assume we are all criminals
Trying to draw parallels between free music and text publishing in relationship to weather they help or hurt sales is an apples to oranges situation.
On the surface, distributing pirated books should be a heck of a lot easier then music. The file size is small (espically in unformated plain text). There is a slightly more difficult situation of getting the printed page to electronic format, but a bored pirate with some OCR software and several hours to kill should be able to do it with little problem.
So, why is'nt anyone trading pirated books? Part of this has to do with a declining love of the medium found in the Internet generation. But I suspect more is found in the computers inability to translate media into an enjoyable format.
When I download a song I like, it's very easy to take the music, pump it to my stereo or burn it onto a CD, making the recording indistingusable from a purchased copy. A text file enjoys no such luxery. Lying on my couch reading off the screen of a laptop is just not as good as holding a book in my hand.
So, when somebody goes online and sees a free book they enjoy, the next logical step is to purchase the thing, because having an actual book format copy is better. There is little value added, other then album art/liner notes, and the knowledge you've done the right thing, by going out and purchasing music.
That having been said, I still think unrestricted free trade of music is a good thing, and helps the artists in the long run. I just don't see this article as being a credible argument for that.
The Internet is generally stupid
Everyone's going on about how this can't be compared because:
1) Books are in diminished form on a computer display
2) Weber's not terribly popular
3) This study is a small sample
So how about brick-and-mortar libraries? They've been around for centuries and don't seem to be harming sales. True, you don't get to Keep the book, but you can read pretty much any book you want whenever you want (with some slight delay) by any author (popular or not) via inter-library loans. And, really, how often do you re-read a fiction novel? Once every few years, if ever again?
I think I've spent more money over the years on books by authors whom I'd sampled at a library than I have on unknowns. I've even been known to go buy a book I read from a library if I liked it well enough.
Maybe that doesn't translate directly to music, since you generally want to keep a song once you've got it rather than having a 2 week loan, but the only difference between this and a public library is that you trade the convenience of a dead-tree book for the convenience of staying home rather than going all the way to the library building. Libraries have yet to kill book sales, and I don't think I've ever heard an author complain about libraries having their book, so this whole thing is a foregone conclusion.
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
On the one hand, his most convincing point is that "certainly giving books away hasn't hurt my sales any, even if it hasn't helped them." But he can't actually say that, can he? Maybe the increase in sales he noticed late in term is a result of exactly what he suggests elsewhere in his essay -- the fact that he's gained more publicity as a writer since the book first came out. In that case, isn't it entirely possible that his sales would have gone up even more if he hadn't given away free copies to a portion of his potential readers?
"But wait," you argue, "the reason he gained publicity is because he was giving the books away." But again, that's not going to be true for everyone, is it? Once every single author in existence is giving away books for free, we'll be at exactly the point we're at now, where the only people who get publicity are the ones who pay for it -- in terms of advertising, book tours, public speaking gigs, what-have-you.
This guy likes giving away books? Fine. He says it hasn't hurt him any. Fine. But his evidence isn't all that empirical. All he can really say is that even though he's giving books away, he's been satisfied with the sales he's gotten.
What's more, he could say the same if he was sending out promo copies of the dead tree version. This doesn't really say much at all about the glorious future of Internet-delivered media, from where I sit. It's just a cute experiment that one guy did. I'd like to see it reproduced by someone else -- maybe a few someones -- before really take any of it seriously.
Breakfast served all day!
For a minute there, I thought you were going to share an anecdote about the "Free Wife" site you'd set up...
Breakfast served all day!
I have a CD changer, and I really enjoy have 100+ CDs at my disposal. However, needing to sit down every 2 weeks and enter the data from the new CDs in is kinda annoying. It is slow and tedious.
I've been considering setting up my computer to easily make a copy of the CDs while using CDDB to fill in CD Text on the copies. Then I could put the original in the album for car trips, and the copy in the CD Jukebox, complete with CD text.
If I were to copy CDs from other people, I would save all the money. For the copy in the car, I like having the real CD. I can flip through pages quickly and pick a CD, something I can't do with the burned copies as nicely. So I can buy CDs and make a copy for either the jukebox or the car, or I can buy 2 copies and have an inferior copy.
I won't do MP3->CD Audio conversion, because they sound awful on a real system. However, I have a mid-range audio solution, if I had a boom box or only my computer to listen on, I probably wouldn't care... What do you think is more common among teenagers/college students, the target market for pop music?
Alex
By far the main enemy any author faces, except a handful of ones who are famous to the public at large, is simply obscurity. Even well-known SF authors are only read by a small percentage of the potential SF audience.
And there's the rub: "most authors" might benefit from having (some of) their texts available for free because their main problem is obscurity, and it'll increase exposure.
However, the publishing industry isn't concerned with the average obscure author. It's built around literary "stars" like grisham and king, who are not only widely known already, but have massive publicity machines to pump up each new book. In these cases, putting texts online for free wouldn't really increase exposure, and would more likely result in a torrent of people rushing in to get the book for free, and actually reduce sales. And, unlike Flint, I would argue that this is a legit concern; music sales have gone down as gnutella has become more popular, and while causality is not guaranteed in this case, neither is it in Flint's. It is a bit of a preemptive worry on the part of publishers, but that doesn't make it a groundless concern.
Hence, encryption and other access controls. Whether it helps or hurts the small-time author is really beside the point from the perspective of people pushing it. It's unfortunate, but true. And I doubt they have the lobbying clout to turn the publishing industry around on this.
Is infinitely better than the opposition, which bases their policy on exactly ZERO.
How many students do you really think can handle the eyestrain of an electronic copy for long?
With the exception of reference books which I use too often to repeatedly take out of the library, the only reason I every buy a book is so that I can lend it out to my friends.
Sure they could wait for the book at the library, but I like having a collection of books I can both recommend to my friends and *give* to them.
If Hillary Rosen heard that she'd cough up Jack Valenti's left kidney, but I sure would buy less books if I couldn't share them.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I ran across the Free Library from a link in a /. comment, and read one of David Webers' books for the first time. I thereby discovered the Honor Harrington series of books of which I got to read the first title for free. I immediately put my friend onto the series who bought the first and subsequent volumes in dead-tree form. I myself discovered webscriptions.net where Baen sells electronic versions of their current and some back title list. I picked up the rest of the Honor series and have taken to reading most of my Baen series through webscriptions (heck, 10$ for 4-5 books, if I only ever read the one I bought that book bundle for, I break even, which has never been the case. If I read all 4-5 books (which is usually the case) I get them for 2-3$/book! A heck of a deal. Also ebooks work for me, I can load them on my palm when I'm working and don't have to carry a paperback with me to a client site, something that distracts from the professional air of a consultant working in 'managment' jobs).
So Baen has definately made money off the 2-3 books they gave me for free.
Incidentally, the author gets more money per book off of books I buy in e-format then they would if I went to the bookstore and bought a copy, and I can download them again if I lose my ecopy, and I save trees.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Avery
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
NO NO NO, it is a coincidence that those books sold more copies. probably because they were better books. they would have sold even more copies if he didn't release them for free!! can't you people see that!! people shouldn't share!! they need to buy their own!! this just boggles the mind!!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
If it works to increase the sale for things as over priced as the normal college textbook...
Does anyone know what the actual textbook(s) is he's referring to? AFAIK, my site The Assayer is the biggest catalog on the web of books that have been intentionally made free-as-in-something by their authors, and I don't have any of the examples he's referring to. I'd be grateful if anyone could reply here about what they are, so I can add them in.
What he's saying matches up perfectly with my own experience with self-publishing free books. My own books are free-as-in-copyleft, and are also for sale in dead tree format. I've done very little traditional promotion, and yet my books have been fairly successful, considering that it's not easy for a self-published author to break into the textbook market. As the author of the article points out, it's pretty hard to know for sure whether certain sales results are the result of any particular action, such as making books available for free in digital form. But one good indication is that the small amount of non-web promotion that I did (sending out free evaluation copies on CD) was nearly all in California, whereas none of the teachers who have adopted my books are in California.
Find free books.
Though I never got into the Napster thing others I worked with did and they put together some CD's that I really liked as they contained alot of old songs that I liked.
Listening to these CDs at work, where they would play them, brought to mind these old songs and even the idea of going out and buying the artist CDs.
But then all the crap started up and I said the hell with it, never buying any of the CDs that the napster stuff brought to mind.
Now it's a matter of out sight (ear) out of mind. To bad for the music business... uh errr...greed business...
Wener Bros. is cracking down on Matrix fan sites now....
All this reminds me of the story of the dog who lost the steak in his mouth when he saw his reflection and his greed tried to get the steak from his own reflection and lost what he had...
I'm not at all supprised about the findings of this author, cept for finding some "creator" realizing all this.
I've fallen sucker to this marketing technique over and over again.
Just a few years ago, I had never heard of trance. Tag's Trance came on the scene, got me hooked with shoutcast streams of incredible music, and now I've got a shelf of Sasha, Digweed, Oakenfold, etc. that I've spent over two thousand bucks on.
Yet according to the RIAA, nobody who has a broadband connection and can pull streams buys music anymore. They're dying to kill off shoutcast broadcasters with absurd new requirements.
Incidentally, no broadcaster in my major metro or any nearby in this part of the country plays trance. I guess the RIAA would rather trance artists die of obscurity than admit they're wrong?
*scoove*
Modern technology makes it possible for independent artists to create, record, and distribute new music without record contracts. RIAA and friends realize this and it scares them. Their business model is obsolete and dying.
In his last apartment, the computer was in the living room. When the wife was on the couch reading a book, if he sat and watched TV, it was 'quality time'. If he sat and read, it was 'quality time'. If he sat and picked his nose... well you get the idea.
:)
The minute he went on the computer (generally doing things like reading and coding, things most people would consider at least a bit more useful and rewarding than the idiot box), she freaked.
I find this sort of antipathy towards computers is all too prevalent in our society. Then again, it's what keeps us in high demand, I suppose...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It has nothing to do with obligation/guilt/insert silly reason here.
People have been able to copy music for decades now. Yet, we still buy original LPs/cassettes/CDs. Why? Because our society has us convinced that there is some sort of value in the 'official' product.
Everyone always comes up with 'recording onto tape loses quality', but come on now - how many of you recorded songs off the radio, just because it was convenient? Sure, the quality sucks, hell, off the radio you miss parts of the song while DJs yack, but people STILL DO THIS. And they STILL BUY CDS. Why?
You can record damn near any movie off of cable/satellite. Yet movie sales keep breaking records. Why?
I doubt it's strictly a quality issue - many non-audio/videophiles have rather shitty playback equipment, it's all the same to them. And if it's all about quality, why would anyone in their right mind use mp3/DivX/VCD?
Fact is, we place a very high value (monetary and otherwise) on 'official' products. Hell, why do you think so many people are so anal about track order for ripped CDs? Does the order of songs matter? Other than for an album like The Wall, I don't see why anyone would care, other than 'This is how the OFFICIAL album goes, therefore I HAVE to have my copy the same'.
Liner notes (or whatever you call the inserts into CD cases), pics of the band, whatever little bit of info you find in a CD... fact is, people have always considered the real thing to have a lot of value, no matter how cheap they can get a copy. Sometimes it's purely for the status symbol of "I own 200 DVDs", which is a lot of the general population.
Let's face it - if people actually cared about the quality of the information, and not moreso the medium, Britney Spears et al wouldn't be anywhere near as popular as they are.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Why would people buy a novel when they can download it?
Because nobody wants to read a whole novel off a computer screen.
Saying that this argument says anything about the recording industry is just silly. If mp3's could only be played off of the computer, and never transferred to CD's, then people would be more inclined to buy the music.
I'd have to put a bookshelf in my pocket to hold all the stuff I've got on my Sony Clié 415's 64 meg memory stick. :)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
When the music industry realizes that people are buying media, not music, we'll all be better off. To make it more attractive, we would probably see better quality album inserts and other items that make buying the CD worth the money.
Therefore, I argue that (music at least) DOES have this sort of media 'problem' - CD liners and other gimmiks included with the album can be *way* better than an ID3 tag or a web site.
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
The real independent music sites are now places like ampcast, javamusic, and electronicscene. The one I use is Ampcast, and my music page can be found by a sufficiently determined search next to my user #580 info :)
I'm by no means saying you're wrong to go shoveling through the music on mp3.com- I myself got some fantastic shakuhachi music there last year. Just know that mp3.com's probably one of the weakest indie sites out there (as well as being RIAA now). I'll give 'em this, however, the really specialized stuff is well represented.
This reminds me of a story I've read about
Isaac Asimov. He said the bounds books
and the paperback versions would appeal
to different audiences, and it wouldn't hurt
to release them at the same time.
It was hard to convince his publisher, but
he finally got his will. And was proven right.
...he's addressing the encryption of books vs. giving them away, in regard to e-book piracy. I think all the people who try to draw conclusions from this in regard to the music industry are missing the point just a bit. They're very different industries, in very complicated ways.
The thing that's worth cheering for is the boost it gives to 1) giving away stuff free, and 2) avoiding encryption. The encryption of e-books is one of the major hot-button issues on Slashdot today, after all.
And another note: the folks at Alexandria Digital Literature have always offered their e-books/e-stories in plain and unencrypted format, and so far they've never had any problems with people pirating those texts.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
At least in trade books there is an 800 pound Gorilla called Ingram. Ingram doesn't work with small time publishers. They set up subsidiaries for those trifiling concerns with less than a few million in sales.
If you're a publsiher with at least five titles and a proven sales record, a marketing department --web based marketing doesn't count-- and say a staff of three or four writers, you have earned the right to be rejected by one of those subsidiaries.
To the point though: if you are just a writer attempting to publish your own work, they don't even want you to apply to the subsidiaries --these are busy people trying to make a living after all. In the case of independent writers trying to self publish, Ingram strongly encourages authors to distribute electronically first. That's already the corporate policy and has been for several years.
So, the resistance to e-texts isn't coming from the corporate mega distributors, it's coming from the small time writers and specialty publishers.
Never heard of the dude. Did come across the Baen Free Library once and didn't see anything on there worth the downloading... It's just a gimmick.
When it comes to pirated books on the internet, here's Neil Gaiman on the theme. Read from Monday April 8th to Wednesday April 10th.
And yes, he's already had the hatemail from 'information wants to be free' freeloaders who like nothing more than to deny people of their income.
"Information wants to be paid"
It's called a printer.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Read the rest of his thoughts. He doesn't believe in unauthorized copying or sharing, and believes that the "information wants to be free" crowd are "ignorant juvenile delinquents (who don't, as a rule, even have the excuse of being juveniles)." Not that I'm totally in favor of abandoning copyright, but demonizing people with that belief should disqualify him from being a Slashdot idol.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
I'm a pretty regular book buyer, and had recently gotten on a sci-fi/fantasy kick (fueled mostly by revisiting my youth via alt.binaries.e-book.) Tired of e-book copies of books my mom still has stored away, I went out and bought some of the other books I found online that looked interesting. I read just the introduction of "The Color of Magic" before I bought the first two installments of Prachett's Discworld series. I thought about also getting a Harlan Ellison book.
But then I saw how much of an ass he was. Sure, posting his work online without permission is wrong, but his overreaction is worse. His statements are arrogant and ignorant. Online posting is more like borrowing from a library than stealing a book sale. Online posting provides a valuable archival function (think Project Gutenberg.) The morons who stock up all of his works are like the warez kiddiez who have the entire Adobe suite, but don't know how to use any of it. Assholes do not get my money. I don't care if his writing is proven to cure cancer, this jerk (who might have gotten my money if I liked something I sampled online) will never see a dime from me. Nor will I read any of works, in print, online, electronically, or otherwise.
Harlan Ellison's fight against sharing generates the same response from me as Metallica's, complete and total rejection. I give my money, attention, and affection to artists, not money grubbing whores.
-sk
NOW, yes. But music sales were increasing up to the exact point where Napster was shut down as a useful service. Then it began falling.