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Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money. Author Paulo 'Pirate' Coelho leapt out of obscurity and onto the best-seller list by giving away his books on the Net. The best-selling author of 'The Alchemist' will even help you pirate his books via his blog. His publishers were not pleased, but then his books went from selling 1,000 copies to 100,000 and then over a million. He gives special credit to pirate translators who are making his work accessible to a wider audience and convincing more people to read his book."
Over and over and over again; We've stated that we believe that it doesn't matter if we can get it for free or not. What matters is that we like it. And in the cases of books, movies and music, if we love it, we will want to buy a copy to place on our shelves!
I have yet to meet anyone with enormous digital collections of copyrighted works that didn't also have enormous physical collections of copyrighted works.
This is yet another clear illustration of what really drives the consumer and forgetting about lawyers trying to justify their existence, let the MARKETERS take notice that this is most likely to be a very successful business model for the future.
Baen Free Library has had much the same experience. Give it away free, sales go up.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
consider this. When you read a book its natural for you to sit with it, printed, preferably in some handy format where you turn pages. It makes sense to let people try before they buy. Personally I sit in my La-Z-Boy with a pot of tea, its nice comfy and let me really enter the world(s) of the book.
Music however got digitized. People don't own high end equipment any longer because the sound will still suck, we are used to music being digital and convenient. A lot of people have gotten used to the idea of music being something massively stored in a box on the network. When you got the music in digital format pirated you don't get any additional value by buying the CD.
RIAA/MPAA still need to get their act together and treat their costumers with respect. (He talks about getting to know your audience)
On a side note, I'm definitely grabbing a copy of the book (as in printed kind from a store) to check it out.
He's not the first author to notice that "giving away" (quotes intended) your books via the Internet leads to increased sales. This might be called an extension of what Baen discovered several years ago. Let people read your books "for free," don't stick restrictions on them, and quite a number of them will end up purchasing those books and others by the author.
I think he's one of the first to really show that encouraging "piracy" actually leads to increased book sales. Obviously, you have to be a good writer in the first place - if your stuff sucks, it doesn't matter whether you give it away or not - but if you are, it'll encourage people to read what you're writing, and buy your books. Somehow, I think that this will get lost on the "suits" at the major publishers, though.
There is no and never will be (in the foreseeable future) a substitute for printed paper books.
This is why people will continue to buy books and how publishers should be making money in this new economy.
Such a strategy is effective by design. This is the problem with businessmen. They think they are so clever with everything they do from abusing imaginary property and patents to cutting costs in quality, but they're actually making less money than a smarter person (who can be ungreedy, or just as greedy) would. Every time a businessman smiles after cutting some cost or forcing someone to pay more does because he's too stupid to realize what he has lost.
Tag effectivebydesign
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Musicians have had to do this for quite some time. They start off making their music, putting up a free MySpace or other page and letting people listen to their music for free. Then, when there's a following, they may start making money off of it. How is this guy really any different, aside from a different medium?
Also, being that he's got a publisher, I wouldn't be surprised if his actions were actionable in a legal sense on their part. In this case it seems to have worked out for the best for all parties involved, but if not, he could be a hurting man.
After all, Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" sold well.
I am officially gone from
The success of this tactic shouldn't come as a surprise. Without popularity/attention, financial success is impossible. What follows is that authors/artists must first do what ever to gain attention. After they have got the attention of the masses, then it shouldn't be too difficult to find ways to make money. While mere attention does not implicate income, it is a requirement for income.
one copy = one lost sale
I don't know where this logic comes from...
But lets be honest here. Books are fundamentally different to music or movies or software. For the vast majority of readers, a physical book is the preferred medium, and you can't pirate these.
Does this mean that it doesn't work like this for purely digital works? No, but it isn't evidence that it does either.
This sig all sigs devours
It is well known that libraries that freely loan books caused the book publishing business to collapse. .... Wait, that's not right.
We need a better theoretical model of intellectual property. Somehow the generally accepted ideas have been shown again and again to be wildly wrong. It is really stupid that most people don't seem to notice that they have to change their thinking.
So giving away product increases sales? If the sale price is zero how do you make money?
Because you're overlooking an important point. You're talking about the "product" existing in two different formats. One, the electronic version, is being given away. The other, the "dead tree" version, is being sold. The production costs of the first are minimal compared to the second. There is also a real difference in the user experience and quality between the two. Giving away the first product leads to interest in it, and increases the likelihood of someone purchasing the second product.
Publishers already "give away" their product. Go to any library, and you can check out a book "for free." This can lead to interest in a given author, and make the people who read the "free" book look for, and purchase, other books by that author. This is well-known, and has been for years. The only difference is that it is now being extended to electronic media. In effect, the "free" stuff is a loss-leader. You're not making your money off the free stuff, but to increase the sales of the stuff you are making money from.
I concur. The problem with piracy is not that works are copied, but that they are without the author's permission. It is really rooted in a false sense of entitlement, the idea that there is a "right" to read/listen to a particular work, regardless of what the author's views on the matter are. I, for one, remain convinced that someone who spends countless days working on something deserves to be compensated for his labor *if he so chooses*. I have no right to demand that he give it away for free or cheaper than he intends. I do, however, have to ability not to buy said work, thereby expressing my discontent, and, if enough potential customers do likewise, prices will go down.
This is actually one of the reasons that some artists are scared of this business model. In the traditional author / publisher / reader model, an author only has to impress the publisher (who shoulders the risk of failure). In this new model, if you suck, you suck, and you will know it. No other entity will screen you financially from failure.
It's a bit scary, but it's great for the consumer!
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
How about libraries? How do these fit in with your theory of "if you want it, you need to pay for it"? And what is the difference, if any, between loaning a book from a library and downloading it off the Internet?
As an aside, my local library now has e-books as well as audiobooks and music available over the Internet for anyone with a library card.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
At the very least this will get more people to look at their game. I've never heard of this one before but as soon as I saw it was free I decided to dl and try it. Maybe Ill get hooked and buy it or maybe ill get bored and delete it. Either way I haven't lost anything and they've gained a potential sale from someone who would never have even looked at the game before.
Everything works some of the time. This is not an obscure author, but an extremely famous one. Radiohead is an extremely famous band. I bet if we really surveyed how often giving away content helps sales, we'd see that it helps some people, and not others. If we could even compare to a control, which is unlikely.
The usual model for giving away content works like this:
1) I can't compete with the bigger brands in my area, so I'll give away what I have for free.
2) The quality of my work will establish me, and fame (eg user base) will lead to big things.
It worked for PHP, but you can't say it worked for PostgreSQL, which was based on something that was famous already. Ditto for Radiohead and Coelho. They're not a good model for most of us.
Um, the Baen Free Library is not an anecdote.
My purchase of DC Comics series, Crime Bible: Five Lessons in Blood, after reading a "pirated" digital copy I had downloaded (not five minutes after I finished reading, I called my comics supplier and had them put the issue in my subscription folder and add the series to my subscription list) -- that is an anecdote. A true one, but an anecdote.
Sales records of multiple titles by multiple authors over the course of several years (admittedly from a single publisher) is HARD DATA, not an anecdote.
Just to clarify - Coelho was very popular long before his blog. I know some of his fans, and none of them even knows he has a blog. Come to think of it, I don't even think his target audience is into reading blogs.
I am willing to bet that releasing the books in electronic format for free hasn't increased his popularity by more than 1%.
Disclaimer: I can't really stand his novels. They are pretty light, claiming and trying to seem deeper and more meaningful. Umberto Eco he clearly ain't.
Giving away some copies to create interest/hype is an ancient tactic. Sounds like this was a fairly clever astroturfing campaign. People have a bit of a herd mentality when it comes to deciding what is popular. If they perceive that something is in demand, they want to find out what the fuss is about. They will often declare it interesting or desirable more because others say it is rather than judging objectively on merit. (exhibit A: Paris Hilton) Arguably the most powerful advertising message there is is "everyone else is doing it". Sounds silly (because it is) but it works VERY well.
One way to think about it is that this instance of astroturfing was a way to create activation energy" necessary to get the "popularity reaction" going. If there is no word of mouth because no one has a copy of the book (or other media) it will probably just sit on shelves and never sell. This fellow was clever enough to create a little artificial demand that turned into the real thing. Just a well done example of a cleverly run public relations campaign. Done right it is very effective and much cheaper than advertising.
I've been saying it for years here and on a variety of sites and print publications: anything that can be copied easily should be given away from the start: recorded music, e-books, stock photography, whatever.
I've also been doing it for years: I've declined to copyright anything I've written, designed, or produced digitally, for about 10 years. In that time, I've made "pots of money" because of it. Why? It's a marketing tool. Give it away, have people use it or reference it, and build your reputation to sell your labors for future projects.
I can't believe others don't do it. I helped a few local bands reach national prominence (magazines, MTV2, etc) by giving away their recorded music in exchange for building a fan-base who would buy their not-so-easily-copied dookie at shows. It works.
I've maintained blogs that have driven people to my subscription-only print newsletter, which I then tell people to give away when they're done reading it. Guess what? That, too, has brought more subscribers.
The future is not about piracy, it's about marketability. You should NEVER hope to make money on something you've already done, but on what you can do. When people see your ability, they'll be more captive in hiring you for a future need. That's where you make your money. If you're an author, give away that e-book: people hate reading things electronically still, and will probably decide to just buy that $10 printed novel or how-to book. Books are cheap to produce now, even one-offs. My print-on-demand supplier has been offering me paperbacks for under $4 printed, so I can sell it for $11 and make a reasonable profit. What's the problem with understanding that?
I'm still shocked at how many content-creators and artists don't want to give away their old works to build future profits. They're too protective of their intellectual property, and unwilling to accept that we're all whores for profit but usually unwilling to actually work hard to earn that profit. I can't begin to count how many "artists" work their rears off to try to become that one hit wonder rather than embracing the idea that working for your entire life is a better end-goal. It's a risk versus reward belief that I stumbled across when I was much younger: why risk putting everything into the hope that you'll be the lucky one out of a million to hit it big on a single item?
The question is- are these the physics of the internet? And the answer is: yes. Instead of fighting these basic principles that are demonstrated again and again, we should focus on leveraging these priciples to profit. Accessibility seems like the best option- make it cheap and convenient, and people will indulge on a larger scale.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
And when you are ignored, you don't get slashdotted, so all the armchair marketers in the world won't know that their "brilliant" theory has failed.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
Are you seriously saying that Paulo Coelho had only sold 10k books by 2001? Dude, he's been publishing for decades, he's sold millions and millions of books _ALL AROUND THE WORLD_.
Don't be an ignorant daffodil.
While there is still time, publishers need to influence the culture and
society so that it is more likely that people will pay for things that
they can get for free but require an upfront development cost.
Instead of antagonizing everyone, they should encourage people to find
their own englightened self-interest in supporting the authors of the
works they enjoy. Sure it's less authoritarian and to some people
inherently scary. However, it is the best way to approach the problem
short of trying to create a police state that exists to serve your
particular interests.
Despise the common man? Enlighten him, don't imprison him.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't mind having to pay for copyrighted works, but then the copyright holders should also have a DUTY to actually provide me with a copy. Case in point: The board game "Gunslinger" by then-publisher Avalon Hill. The company is owned by Hasbro now, but if I walk into a game store I cannot find a copy - all those made have sold out. So where can I pay and get the work in question? Only second-hand, the market that some copyright work providers appear to loathe.
"Out of print" should NOT be an option. Either the law should mandate copies be made to satisfy demand, OR the copyright should be revoked if they refused, and enter the public domain where works of art are supposed to go eventually anyway, so that others can make the copies needed.