Slashdot Mirror
Another Sky Press Driving Neo-Patronage
avidreader writes "Another Sky Press is making a serious go of the neo-patronage / tip jar model — their tagline is 'Welcome to Another Sky Press. We want people to read our books even if they read them for free — though we'd love it if you bought a copy!' Not only are they putting the entire text of their releases online, but they're selling the dead tree versions at cost plus optional contribution. Their first release is garnering some great reviews - 'Intelligent fiction for the mentally unhinged.' According to their website, there are more projects in the works — everything from a short story anthology to a coloring book by artist Jesse Reno. They've also got interesting essays on why they're doing this and neo-patronage. They're even getting neo-patronage some mainstream attention — the Metro Times calls them '...more punk than the punks at Dischord Records.'"
Haven't you heard? Punk's dead.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Distribution costs could still be a bit high. I can't say I see them making much of a profit, either, aside from "OMG VENTURE INVEST!!11!" They should use bittorrent to keep it cheap.
if you like it, BUY IT
Er, it's nice that it's free, but can't we have a standard format available like HTML or PDF? It's a nuisance to read a book as fixed images.
Should be 'Welcome to Another...awww cr*p...the server's been slashdotted again'
I think I sent someone $5 in 1994...no wait, I didn't.
Wow! That's pretty much what I got on my last employee evaluation, so you know it must be a hell of a book.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I can always use more good reading material and would certainly donate if I felt the work was good.
:D
Fiction authors deserve an "Open Source" solution of their own
(end of post)
I'm the founder of No Copyright Studios, a production company that repudiates legal copyright and everything that goes with the use of force.
We're currently in the process of signing bands, podcasters and other free market pro-freedom content creators to our "movement" which is nothing more than a new way to find ways to profit without using the law. We believe that the law creates cartels and monopoly markets that are nearly impossible to penetrate -- copyright is one of those legal manipulations that only helps the big boys and hurts the little guy.
I have created content for nearly 18 years and have NEVER used copyright to protect my work. I've written songs, books, blogs and newsletters and I openly advocate the copying of them (or what I call "Free Marketing" for me). I even let people drop my name if they wish, but I warn them that if I catch them I'll publicly embarass them for putting their own name on it.
Once you create something that is easily mimiced or duplicated, there is NOTHING you can do to protect yourself. Copyright laws? How will you fight in civil court? With what money? Why even embrace copyright when there are already ways to make money without it. I make money on my sites, on my music that I produce, and on the books (e- and printed) that I've created, and I openly admit that I don't use any protection on the content other than a moral obligation for my reader not to copy it.
I can't enforce the morals of others, other than public embarassment and humiliation. That is the best way to protect your content -- and it also opens up a huge audience of people who don't realize how much copyright frustrates them, once they realize that copyright doesn't protect anyone but the largest content distribution cartels.
http://www.anothersky.org.nyud.net:8090/
No ... MXPX is reviving it!
"MXPX has undergone a punk rock revival, and Panic is the result. They stripped every bit of gimmick and artificial sweetener from their brand of West Coast Punk. I couldn't be happier with their effort, and neither could the thousands of punks who have been looking for a new battle cry to sing as they raise their banner and fists in the air."
-Daniel Brantley
the Chattanoogan.com
but the text is the thing of value to the author. Brave authors and publishers realise this, and allow access to the text of the book as a means of promoting the paper book (which people will readily pay for). My site http://www.astoryforbedtime.com/ works on this principal for books aimed at the pre-school audience, where the book with the pictures (and holes to poke fingers through etc.) is an essential part of the value of the book. I have permission from the publishers to allow anyone (yes that includes you . . .) to contribute an audio reading of the book, which I can distribute from the site for free. If folk want to see the pictures then they can click through to Amazon etc. and buy it (sales to date=$0.00, but it is more about sharing and promoting reading to kids than making money). Publishers of childrens picture books are very nice people, and very willing to accept innovative ways to promote reading, I was very surprised at how positively my site was viewed by the publishers.
"Another Sky Press Driving Neo-Patronage" -- yet another in the time-honored tradition of new-economy names colliding with old-school English grammar.
I first read it as "[Another Sky] [Press-Driving] [Neo-Patronage]", and wondered what "Press-Driving" meant -- would it be something similar to Astroturfing?
Then I read it again, as "[(yet) Another] [Sky Press] [Driving Neo-Patronage]". A little closer to the true intent, but I wondered what a "Sky Press" is, and how many others are out there if this is just yet another one?
So I read the article -- crazy and dangerous, I know -- and found out that it's "[Another Sky Press] [Driving Neo-Patronage]". Ok, I get it now. Thanks.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
And get someone that knows what fonts are hard to read.
- Kal`Goblez
I believe Miriam-Webster is instructive on this point:
One entry found for patronize.
Main Entry: patronize
Pronunciation: 'pA-tr&-"nIz, 'pa-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -izing
1 : to act as patron of : provide aid or support for
2 : to adopt an air of condescension toward : treat haughtily or coolly
3 : to be a frequent or regular customer or client of
If an artist CHOOSES to contribute his work under this "system," then fine.
But it boggles my mind why anyone would want to put himself in the position of a feudal serf. I would rather give my work away freely or to sell it at a fair price.
Writer obtains a following through free distribution. Writer wants to make money with future works. Having written a new work, writer freely distributes samples of this work. Writer then sets a contribution bounty, for fair compensation of his time and effort. Once the set amount is reached, the work is then released for free distribution.
The only way to control the flow of copyrighted information (intrusive law enforcement and DRM notwithstanding) is to not distribute in the first place.
Is it my imagination or is there a grand total of one book on the entire website?
So Netcraft confirms that punk is dead? Does that mean punk and BSD go together?
So if BSD is dying and punk is dead...that explains why I like both...they have a lot in common.
technoid_
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
I'm skeptical about their business model. I've sold my own free-as-in-speech physics books by mail order, handling my own orders myself, and it was a lot of work, and hard to do efficiently. They could just set up the book for sale on lulu, set their royalty rate to zero, and get almost the same price, and then lulu would handle all the mechanics of charging the customer and filling the orders. Of course, it's possible that a lot of people will choose to donate significantly more than $0, but the utter failure of the shareware scene doesn't make me very optimistic about that. I'd love it if they could prove me wrong, though.
Find free books.
so the nice big picture on tipjar.com these days really doesn't
symbolize a grand re-opening and powering up the vault server again
but that day will come, hopefully this year.
I look at slashdot every few months and hey presto "Neo-Patronage"
is the new buzzword for what we called "Online Busking" a decade ago.
I look forward to attempting to integrate this publisher into the
tipjar empire. Got to get the empire's tendrils a little farther
than the entrepreneur's own kitchen first.
Thanks for your support.
What happened to the previous Sky Press(es)?
Sky Press defines Neo-Patronage as, "an honor/trust based system of financial support for an artist that comes from the artist's collective audience, rather than a single individual or organization. The sum of all patron contributions becomes the means and incentive for the artist to continue his or her work."
./) - they are both denying fundamental aspects of human nature.
I think they have the same problem that the MAFIAA has (love that name for the copyright cartels, which I just recently saw here on
The MAFIAA want to deny the fundamental urge of people to "share cool stuff" - and that the internet makes sharing so easy and so ridiculously cheap that everyone can share.
Sky Press are denying both the fundamental urge of people to "get stuff for free" and to "get good value for their money."
Sky Press appears to believe that art, or ultimately content of any sort, should be a charitable action. The artist gives away the fruits of his labor with no strings attached and the audience gives money to the artist with no strings attached.
I just don't see that working beyond very small, fairly insular, niches. I believe that ultimately such a model will result in a "neo-tragedy-of-the-commons" where lots of people take copies of the artist's work, but all, or almost all, will rely on "the other guy" to give money in support of the artists further work. Ultimately there won't be enough "other guys" to make the effort worthwhile - that's simply human nature - people don't like to pay for something they've already received for free.
Sky Press criticizes the original system of patronage for exercising too much control over the artist's work. If you believe that art has no measurable value, then Sky Press would be right. But as long as an artist expects to be able to support himself through his works, then they need to have value to someone who is willing to pay him for the creation of those works.
That is not to say that an artist must fully obey the wishes of his audience - but he must at least take direction from the audience as to what projects he should undertake if he wants a reasonable expectation of getting paid. That's human nature -- few people can afford, and even less can accept the concept of simply giving away money to someone because he might or might not create something that might or might not be reasonably entertaining.
I understand it's somewhat trendy to not use capital letters in logos, but am I the only one who finds it unforgivable to not capitalize the contents of the tag?
Greetings,
http://www.baen.com/ has been doing this for years. Additionally there are two government standards boards who have been doing it even longer than Baen Books. There are music companies doing this as well, most notably http://www.magnatune.com/.
Now, while I buy books from other publishers than Baen, I find that I buy 4x from Baen than I buy from any other publisher. To be honest, it was their free books that got me hooked. I was bored one night and looking for the next book to read, I tumbled across Baen's free library and picked an author at random. The author's name is David Weber and I enjoyed the book so much that I went out the following weekend and bought the entire series (8 books at the time). A couple weeks later, I went about the complete series again and sent it to a friend. And then about 6 months ago, I bought the entire series again (Up to 11 books now) and donated them a local library. All total that is roughly $300 that I have spent, and I have since found another 5 authors in their stables that I read almost religeously.
Magnatune is similar, I first heard about them when a friend handed me a CD (This is legal under Magnatune's rules) with about 200 MP3's of music from their stable. I found that I really liked 6 of the artists on there and have since bought every CD that each of those bands has. BTW, I have not bought music from any of the RIAA companies since I found Magnatune.
Yes, I know this will get modded into trollsville, but I can see no reason whatsoever for this posting. It is simply an ad, complete with blurbs.
Dog is my co-pilot.
If they're giving their stuff away for free, they can't afford to pay for advertising.
Well, okay. Here's my contribution to 'neo patronage'/'online busking':
http://www.ixenfor.com/
Axiom - a free, experimental fantasy novel set within a unique Bronze Age world.
PDF and HTML formats available. Low bandwidth site...
Damn, everything reads like spam these days...
Winzip's revenues in 2005 declined to a mere 22.7 million dollars. (http://www.forbes.com/strategies/2006/04/20/ipo-o utlook-corel-cx_sr_0421ipooutlook.html) This is from a program that has been freely available in uncrippled form for, um, forever. (I just got around to finally buying a copy this year -- I figured "I've been using it for like a decade now, its time I was honest about it"). There's a handful of shareware authors with six figure incomes (www.goodsol.com) and more than a few who made a full-time career out of it (who remembers VGAPlanets?).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
as the song goes....
I've been doing this for years on one of my sites, with great success. Here's an article I wrote back in Y2K on how
it works..
http://tipping.selfpromotion.com/
Their twist for dead-tree pricing, cost+the tip, is a nice refinement. It'll be interesting to see how it works out.
"World Domination - a fun, family activity"
Have you tried their Free Library or one of their copyable book CDs yet?
HTML and a variety of other common document formats, and the right to copy sans only the right to sell your copies. Oh, yes, an addiction warning: great authors and many great stories are provided.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Dischord Records is the label started by Ian MacKaye in Washington DC. Ian MacKaye was/is the central figure in three DC hardcore bands: The Teen Idles, Minor Threat, and Fugazi. Bad Brains and Minor Threat essentially created the DC hardcore punk scene in the mid-eighties. MacKaye is also the creator of the Straight Edge philosophy, which he developed in several Minor Threat songs: "Straight Edge", "Bottled Violence", "In My Eyes", and "Out of Step (with the world)", for example. Dischord Records was started so that punk bands could release albums at a very low cost and not have to deal with big corporate labels.
Anyone interested in the DC punk scene ought to check out Dance of Days which chronicles the development of DC punk.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
The Sex Pistols fucking rule. As do The Misfits (original only), Descendents, Minor Threat, and a shload of other bands out there. Punk is far from dead.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com