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Results of Another Web Publishing Experiment
Dienyddio writes "Shadowmarch, an ambitious web publishing project launched by Tad Williams last year (previously mentioned on slashdot) is to cease the bi-monthly story format after one year. The sad news was broken by Tad on the site. It seems that there were just too few subscribers to make the format pay, this combined with the heavy load placed on Tad by writing two episodes a month and a paper book to pay the bills has proved too much. All is not lost, DAW books has purchased the rights to three books based on the Shadowmarch story. It is hoped that these books will maintain the community side of the site. Tad will also be increasing the number of background stories and details relating to the Shadowmarch world on the site in order to promote fan interaction."
probably should have been more advertising. this is the first time i'm hearing about this company.
I think this and prior attempts don't show that publishing on the Web doesn't work so much as they show that publishing books in serialized installments doesn't work.
It seems that there were just too few subscribers to make the format pay
Yeah, I had that problem with the old printed book format too. You think maybe I just suck as a writer?
OK, I know it's been said a million times before, but we really need micropayments. And $1 paypal donations don't count. It seems like there's a lot of money to be had with micropayments, so why hasn't something started up?
I guess I'm asking an open question. Micropayments have seemed like such a good idea for so long, why hasn't it happened yet?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
What people fail to remember for some inexplicable reason beyond my ability to comprehend the mass mind, is that *personal* computers were originally developed as a hobby. The open source movement, free access to websites, the whole state of mind of computer hackers (not crackers), they all derives from the mentality of hobbyists, and hobbyists do not like to be charged for something they can do, or think they can do, themselves. Model airplane builders don't run out and buy ready-made kits if they can build them themselves. People who want to profit from the web need to keep this in mind.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
What's the difference between an internet author and a large pizza?
A large pizza can feed a family of four.
(replace "internet author" with artist, musician, open-source programmer, etc.)
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This kind of stuff leaves me cold as a dead goose - so I can't judge the quality of it. But lets assume the quality is:
a: BAD
Then it deserves to fail because lifes too short for bad ANYTHING. Just because you have a funky new delivery mechanism doesn't make the product better.
b: AVERAGE
See a
c: GOOD
Then those people who read it should have shouted about it more - and persuaded more of their network to start paying for it too. As a kid at school (in Scotland) I started buying Batman comics in town. When I told my friends they started buying batman comics. They werent available in the mainstream newsagents at the time - so you had to go into the spooky comic shop with the stinky dudes. About 10 years later the guy that worked there told me that we collectively bought about 100 comics a month from him - from zero to 100 in 2 months in fact. Now that didn't make DC any more money -but it helped him! His little comic shop was selling 100 more comics a month.
The point? I dont know. People have to hear of something to know they want it enough to part with the money!
d: EXCELLENT
Then he'll make more money doing it on paper and good luck to him!
e: BESTTHINGEVEROHMYGODTHEYCANTCANCELTHATTHEBASTARDS
Yeah right!
...heavy load placed on Tad by writing two episodes a month...
Twice per month is semi-monthly not bi-monthly.
Bi-monthly is every two months.
pr0n,
video pr0n,
fetish pr0n...
(*) pr0n,
whos going to pay for a book on the net if its not pr0n?
btw, book people are generally not that computer literate. i mean sure they can use email and sht but they generally dont spend the time to read of of a website when they can go and buy a book to cozy up to. especially since the book they can put on their shelf and display when their finnished. but this is a whole other can of worms.
I want 2D games back.
I have to agree. This reminds me of when adcritic.com went out of business. I used to love the site, and I went to it all the time. Then one day *poof* I went and it was out of commision. What troubled me is that they never put out a plea for help! I for one would have payed money for the service, but I was never asked to. I know in this situation, they already had a subscription service, but did they ever bother to put out a red flag? Did they put up a donation link and say "We are running out of money, if we don't get more subscriptions and donations, we are going to have to sell out" ? Did they get thier loyal fans to go tell all of thier chat room buddies to check it out, and give a donation or buy a subscription? It just seems like a waste to me to have a "community" based site, and then not take advantage of it when it's really needed.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
That Tad - by his own admission - isn't that hot on writing to a schedule. And I agree with him on this; when left to his own devices, he produces seriously high quality work. When the deadlines kick in, he becomes much more generic and (dare I say it?) can border on the mediocre.
Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy his work, I just think this ticking-clock scheme was a bad idea for his style of uncompromising "it's done when it's done" creativity.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
First, congratulations to Tad for finding someone to publish ShadowMarch. I've not read the installments, but getting someone to foot your bills so that you can write is a good thing.
Second,
this may be a small insight to those who believe that "free as in beer" is what all entertainment should be. I remember a gazillion posts on why it's ok to simply take music et al without concern for whether the artist gets paid. Two common threads that I can recall were:
1. We don't want to pay those stinkin' middlemen record companies and publishers.
2. Hey, creators create. There is and always will be plenty of stuff.
I have to agree with 1. I don't want to pay those stinkin' middlement record companies and publishers either. They really are a nasty bunch of thieves. OTOH, they will get people to pay for Tad's work and let him pay a few bills. The publishers make the fotune, but Tad can write without doing in the family.
2 is problematic. It seems to presume either that the most artists have no concern for the material world -- no desire for family, home, lights turned on, etc -- or that all art is equal and that every Joe down the street can write or sing with the very best of them. Such people should spend a weekend tied down in front of a constant stream of Suddenly Susan episodes. It isn't true of programmers and it isn't true of artists.
Online publishing isn't always intended to be one's primary source of revenue. I think this example and the Stephen King experiments show that at least for now, we don't have a workable system that will allow someone to live off what they're writing online. (Closest I've seen are extremely popular webcomics like Penny and 8-bit, but they also have side businesses and advertising and sometimes don't meet their goals.) It's not time for pro writing online yet. I have faith that a workable formula will be found, but until then, it's not a bet I'd wanna take.
For folks like me who are just publishing because they like to write and something compells them so that they HAVE to write, with the end result being freely available, it's much easier. I've got a day job that pays the bills so I can come home and write. Works pretty well in terms of keeping me in the black...
The problem then becomes 'Death by Popularity'. As much as we love the internet as a bastion of free speech and free expression and so on and so forth, bandwidth is decidedly NOT free. The slashdot effect can pretty much wipe out your website -- and then your ISP will cheerfully charge you for all that traffic brought on by thousands of happy readers enjoying your work.
Even pro sites and webcomics have this problem, where they start small, get popular, and get crushed by bandwidth costs from so many people simply digging their stuff. It's even worse for aspiring independent bands; the RIAA can afford to pipe thousands of MP3s off a website (even if they don't wanna), but Joe Q. Guitar Player might not be able to.
I really hope someone comes up with a technology or a revnue model that works. I'll keep writing regardless of whether or not it turns a penny, but it'd be one less headache if I didn't have to worry about my work costing me an arm and a leg to get out there.
Obligatory whoring plug for said work: Unreal Estate, a scifi comedy. It's got open source reality innit. Whee! Now let's see if it survives the link being posted to slashdot. (Probably will since nobody reads comments, right? *EL WINK*)
My girlfriend is a HUGE Tad Williams fan (I am also, to a lesser degree) and she hadn't heard of this at all until a couple months ago when I stumbled across it. She also spends even more time on the internet than I do. Better/more marketing would have helped alot (although I'm not really sure what they could have done, or what they did for that matter).
*licks lips, rubs hands. "Brainsss..."
I have an artist friend that signed an exclusive contract with a gallery, then they chose only about 10% of her work and gave her maybe 10 pct of the sale price. Fortunetly she had a job teaching at the Art Institue of Chicago and was able to let the contract run out and still eat. She was new to this country and creative distribution system, not new to art.
And they talk about us foolish Americans
Well I just subscribed to Tad's site. I support the idea of his trying to get direct support for his work if not for the value given from the work itself (we are at a bootstrap point in this model).
Here is an opportunity for someone to put up a site for these types of efforts to help get exposure and marketing. Well that will work until someone sees the profit of it then starts to squeeze. But maybe there will be a breif period when things work like they should, like early Greece or early Internet maybe.
The consequence is that the content itself isn't worth thinking about.
Clay Shirky argues this point better than I've expressed it here....
this was a doomed idea from day one. Subscription to read a book...yeah right...Is a good thing Tad employs a business manager to take care of most of his finances. I am sorry but 8$ for a book is one thing, to pay monthly to read a new installment, this is not the 40's and this is not radio, and even IT was FREE. Somewhere some fool convinced the ad companies that banner ads work, that guy is a genius, and the ad companies are blind morons. I can honestly say I HAVE NEVER clinked thru a banner. If it is interesting enough I might, on my own go try a url BUT I refuse to use banners or pop-ups. I know I am not alone in this methodology.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
THe only reason I didn't subscribe was because I didn't like the payment method. I can't even remember what it was, but I think it was PayPal only when I tried. (It was also hard to get at the "payment methods" screen -- I had to set up a login first.) It may be different now, but I never bothered going back.
It's just so much easier to go out and buy a book, I guess. :( Too bad, because it's a really good story and a very interesting project. And now people will say "look, online publishing doesn't work!" when it might (might) be a logistical issue.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
I sparced that as "Results of Another Web Punishing Experiment"
:)
Up too late last night.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Everyone is talking about the lack of advertising or the flawed subscription model, and that's fine, but I don't think that's the WHOLE story.
I think a lot of people didn't buy into Shadowmarch simply because they were tired of Tad Williams' work. And when I say tired, I mean exhausted. Williams' is infamous for his 3000+ page epics that are chock full of characters and locales but very little actual plot. It happened with 'Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn' and it happened with 'Otherland', and there was every indication it was happening again with 'Shadowmarch'.
Some people may enjoy that style of writing, but after the first two series I'd had enough. That's why I didn't subscribe.
But again, writing in the present tense is merely a tool; like writing from the first person point of view, or in the future tense (see David Brin's "Kiln People") - in this case, writing present tense was a very appropriate tool - it added a sense of immediacy to the story that went very well with the episodes being written right this very moment. Shakespeare wrote with pen and 'paper'. Following your line of reasoning this would mean...? Just use M$ Windows like everybody else. Luckily Tad never bought into that stupid idea. The story is just plain HTML - and we the readers can do anything we like with it; which is extremely useful. You have no idea how good it is to be able to grep through all those episodes looking for specific references. And as Eric Flint has shown, 'piracy' in this field does not harm authors.
A perfect example of the difficulties facing online publishers is the fate of Aardvark in New Zealand.
:-)
This is one of the longest-running online Net-news and commentary publications on the web, having started in 1995 and been published without a break ever since. During that time it has developed an enviable reputation for frankness and insight, and scooping important stories, while attracting an audience that is the "who's who" of the NZ Internet and IT marketplace.
At one time in the late 1990s it was even profitable -- but that was when advertising dollars flowed like water.
Now, despite having a regular readership of around 5,000 people (mainly IT/Net workers and decision-makers) and scoring over 80,000 visits to the front-page every month (not too bad in a country of just 3.8 million people), the crunch point has been reached.
It costs more than $30K a year (mainly the writer/publisher's time) to produce on a daily basis and, given the general downturn in the Net marketplace since 2000, that's a figure which has become hard to justify.
Attempts to generate revenues by soliciting donations produced no more than a few hundred dollars over a period of several months and finding a corporate sponsor appeared impossible. The very blunt and uncompromising nature of the commentaries may well have contributed to this -- after all, who wants to sponsor a publication that will jump all over you if you mess up?
Once it was announced that publication would cease, almost 100 readers came forward and offered to pay a subscription -- but that would still only return an hourly rate of less than $6 (US$3) on the time invested in its writing and publication.
Since late 2000, advertising hasn't been an option. The low prices, cost of soliciting, scheduling, reporting and chasing debtors means that there's no profit to be had even if advertisers can be found.
So, who's going to work for US$3/hr?
Who can afford to work for US$3/hr?
Despite the fact that publishing to the web is a whole lot cheaper than print or broadcast, it's still a difficult medium in which to turn a profit.
when their finnished
:)
You mean, after they've installed Linux?
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