I downloaded it - my masters degree was researching the use of AI in computer games so it was an easy grab. I wouldn’t however have bought it unless I ran across it in a secondhand bookshop, and it was cheap.

If you’re not going to make any significate money from an item any more (and an 8 year old title about an ever changing technology would seem a good candidate) why not give it away? Increase the good karma in the world, make people think you are a nice guy, increase your “connectedness” to a population who might well give you money for your next project. There are very few arguments against this behavior (IMHO).

>take away the filters of commissioning and editing, and the proportion of crap rises dramatically rises

True but the total number of publications rises massively, so there are more gems, they are just harder to find. Add a different form of filtering (Wisdom of crowds style filtering) and (hopefully) these gems rise to the surface. Filtering can also become personal, so all those other people who like books about dogs in space will influence whatever system to recommend me “Mega dogs in space 4*” which I might have missed. “Mega dogs in space 4″ will never get across the desk of a tradional publishing house, unless they happen to have “K9 Moon Adventure” on their books and it was a freak hit.

You also get a lot of gems which might not have been highlighted by the publishing industry too.

*examples strictly made up, and not available in print. yet.

Forgive my long quote, but:

…What is the writer or musician to do, though, if she can’t earn money from her art? Simple, says the Slashdotter: earn your money playing live (if you’re one of those musicians who plays live),3 or selling T-shirts or merchandise, or providing some other kind of “value-added” service.

[…]
Oh Mr Freetard, you work as a programmer, do you? How interesting. So do you perform all your corporate programming duties for free, and earn your keep by selling personally branded mousemats on the side?

No, you don’t sell mousemats, you sell your services. The software is free, but if some user wants a new feature, you charge for your time writing that feature. I worked for a few years doing just that: I wrote software that I gave away and charged for my time making improvements.

The problem is that the lifestyle sucks. You make X dollars an hour, and that’s it. You can’t rest on your laurels, because you have to keep working to get paid. No benefits. No holidays. Just hand to mouth.

Thanks, Erigami, that’s interesting. Although I can’t quite see how it can be translated into a model for writers. The exception maybe is if you’re writing one of those books that tell corporations how to be ultramodern and groovy — then you can make such a good living in speaking and consultancy fees that you probably could give the book away free in the first place. But it’s a bit of a niche genre.

coldclimate, I love the idea of being alerted as soon as there is a new book about dogs in space, but there might be a danger of some kind of Cass Sunstein-style echo chamber actually happening here, if readers only get told about the kinds of things they already like. I like to hear about books that are not like those I’ve already read. Will “Wisdom of crowds”-style filtering do that for me? I dunno. Are links that make it to the front page of Digg really the best things on the internets at that moment?

While the free ebook as promo and brand building tool works now in this transition phase, your question, what happens when the majority of book purchases are ebooks? is telling. Are we creating an expectation that such works should be free?

Over the last five years a growing portion of my book acquisitions is by download, and my attitude as a consumer, once I decide I want a story or book, is just to go see where I can download it — for free, for pay, legal, illegal, doesn’t matter.

I once had the chance to talk to Cory Doctorow in person about this topic, and he is persuasive. But when I look at my own habits — I am spending less on books than I used to — I know there’s a catch somewhere.

There is an iTunes equivalent for books, fictionwise.com. Not as elegant as iTunes, some books have really annoying DRM, but some books are free, and you can buy individual short stories or novelas as well. When finding a free version of a book I want proves too difficult, I just go to Fictionwise and plonk down my three or four bucks. I also use it to browse for new stuff I might be interested in.

You are correct. I am not a writer, and I still will buy paper books as long as they’re more fun to read. But once the iPod of books comes out, I’m sure I’ll do to dead trees what I already did done to physical music formats.

And just like with music, I will only pay for something if “free” is not an option. Before I buy anything from Amazon MP3, for instance, I first check all the trackers.

Anyway. While I think that blanket licensing is an option for music (read up on the EFF proposal, which even Warner is now considering), I’m not sure how it would work for books. Could I pay to subscribe to Google books or Amazon, with proceeds going to those authors I read or download? Any such scheme would reduce the amount on money pro writers got overnight. Something like that may turn out to be the only way forward, which is a shame.

I don’t think the Slashdot argument is that anyone who is creative (writing/composing/whatever) should be denied payment for their efforts, but simply that those who are going to be the most successful going forward are those that embrace a new business model, rather than continue to cling on by their fingernails to the old one.

The record companies are a perfect example of what happens when you cling on too tightly. At first they tried to pretend the Internet didn’t exist, and then when Napster came along they sat there and just lashed out at anybody that tried to take away their comfort zone. Then they woke up a bit, and at least admitted they needed to do something. But they lock up their songs up with DRM, sue anybody who ever touches a file sharing network, and in one Sony case, install malicious software on your customers computer. This is simply not the way to conduct yourself. Not only is it hugely damaging to their brand, but it also devalues music even further, as those who truly do like the rebellion distance themselves even further from the money grabbing corporate whores the music executives appear to be. The harder the music companies push, the harder it is for them to win back the mindshare.

But some of them are beginning to get it. iTunes was the first real step in actually providing what people wanted, easy access to the songs people wanted. And unlike Napster, you had a 100% chance of actually getting the song you wanted to download, with proper tags, and not an MP3 rip of a song recorded from the radio with a DJ talking in Spanish over the end. Starting to allow DRM-free versions, even in their previously feared MP3 format at Amazon, shows that they have finally realised you should treat your customers as people first, and thieves later; not the other way around.

The lesson from this is that change should not be feared. Grab the internet generation with both hands and use them to your advantage, rather than locking your doors and cowering in the corner with your old business model pressed tightly to your chest, afraid that the mob is coming to steal it from you. For musicians this means giving away a few tracks from your new album for free and selling the rest, with a premium for the higher quality lossless versions. Or selling complete recordings of all your live shows. And using the momentum from this to sell more tickets to your next show (see TMBG and Barenaked Ladies). For writers, this means giving away your last book for free in order to create publicity for the one you’re about to release in hard copy. Or giving away the first couple of chapters for free as an incentive to buy the rest. Or selling your novel one chapter at a time, as you write it (see Stephen King). And if you’re a movie producer, let people download the first 30 minutes of your movie for free and then let them buy the DVD containing the rest of the film direct from your website.

And most importantly, take the feedback from your audience, interact with them, let their word of mouth be your marketing machine and never treat them like criminals. People will be more than happy to pay for your work if the price and terms are fair. At the end of the day these are your customers, and for the first time in human history creative people have the opportunity to truly communicate with those who appreciate their art en mass, and that should be something artists should be excited about, not fearful of.

Steven, Erigami’s got it. The model described is already in place for writers of the magazine/newspaper variety. Specifically the part where a paying client needs something written and must come up with an incentive to get it done. This is different from the traditional book model where a writes comes up with a book, and must convince someone to *retroactively* make it worth their while. You could, for example, write on a form of commission, coughing up chapters and ideas as your audience shows willingness to pay for them. No pay, no write. The internet happens to make this part easy too.

Your dichotomy only exists if you assume that you have to create the work first and figure out a way to compensate for all that lost time second.

This is how I’ve found open source software to work: enough gets written for free to scratch the creator’s particular itch, but specific feature requests or promises of reliability aren’t addressed without some form of payback: a service contract, maybe a job.

Calling your tip jar a “tip jar” really serves to reinforce the inequality you’re talking about, since tips are by definition an optional extra for services rendered. Start calling it a “next chapter jar” and don’t write until you know you’ve got an audience invested in your next move.

“writes” should be “writer” in that fourth sentence. =P

jhn: You’ve got it completely and perfectly backwards: check the trackers if and only if what you are looking for isn’t available on Amazon MP3. It’s the right thing to do, and at least you’re pretending someone else’s hard work is worth paying for.

But if there’s been a comparable success by a band that hasn’t already gained its cultural capital and name-recognition through the evils of copyright and corporate promotion, I’d like to know about it.

There’s been a few MySpace artists who have built a fan base before releasing via “normal” industry channels and there’s been some other minor success stories. However, I agree: Radiohead and NIN’s foray into free or cheap give-aways were nothing more than publicity stunts. Radiohead’s album isn’t available via their site any more, proving that they saw it as promo only too.

It’s an interesting time… There really doesn’t seem to be a good new business model for any creative distribution over the net, be it for software, music, books or video. It’s either the old way (sell at full price with DRM and punish those who copy) or the new way (give everything away for free and pay the mortgage with your day job, because you will have to keep one).

The best solution as you said is an iTunes model… slightly discounted prices for higher convenience. It stops casual pirates and gives us all a unified distribution point. The benefit is that you’re fighting the bad guys with something that’s positive for your customers. Piracy is only going to get easier though, so the convenience angle won’t last forever, only until pimple-faced coder builds a better piracy app.

…which leaves us in the same place again.

Can we eat if our only source of income is an honesty box? Probably not.

Do any of you chaps visit confguide? We have a mong on there by the name of Skippy. Any relation?

Two more data points that I think are relevant to your ‘lab report’:

1. By the time Trigger Happy was released online, what were its yearly sales numbers, compared to its first year in print?

2. How do the initial sales numbers of Unspeak compare to the initial sales numbers of Trigger Happy?

There is always the library, isn’t there? I don’t know. It still doesn’t seem like the odds of someone buying your book or giving you cash for your words decreases very much if the stuff is widely available. I could probably run a google search and find the full text of your book way before you put it out yourself. I get the ease-of-use or ease-of-reading or even comfort-level arguments against digital books, I just don’t know if that’s quite how it works.

I think it is indeed true that we will see many fewer people making huge gobs of cash for writing, just as we’ll see many fewer making huge gobs of cash for making music. However, I think we’ll see many more people *making a living* doing these things. I don’t think the ratio of good work:shit work actually increases that much when you take away the barriers to entry. I think there’s more of both with a slight lean towards the shit, but not nearly as much as one might think (or worry).

The billion-seller is probably going the way of the dodo, but the thousand seller can still put food on the table, yeah?

Dude, virtually NO ONE makes a living writing fiction, on or OFF the internet.

This isn’t about copyright or PDFs or DRM. It’s about, fiction is almost impossible to make a living from.

Most people with hardcover physical books and contracts with major publishing houses are making approximately as much money on their works as you did on yours, which is to say zero for all practical intents and purposes.

So you missed on, what, the $20,000 advance you might have gotten on that book? That would have half been eaten by taxes and a couple thousand more on out of pocket expenses….

And nonfiction books are hardly better. Writers making money tend to work for periodicals, technical publishers, movie studios, tv studios, and even then they tend to feel poorer than everyone around them,

Writer feels miserable and underpaid and is bitter about Something Wrong With Society Or A Subset Thereof, film at 11.

I think there is a place for cheap downloadable books alongside physical copies in the small press arena. Too much stuff is published or reprinted in a pretty limited print runs because that is what the publishers have the money to produce, and because over producing a book is an expensive mistake to make. I’d happily pay a few quid for a pdf of Lucius Shepard short stories whose 350 printed copies have now gone.

I’m not sure what you do about the DRM aspect of things, I think the answer may just end up being that buying through online shops will be easier than searching for valid torrents, let people read extracts for free so they can do the equivalent of book shop browsing.

There is a vanishingly small number of writers who make a living writing books of their own choosing (that is, excluding those who have “real jobs” on the side, or who ghostwrite/are ghostwritten).

Given the observed facts, it simply is not reasonable to expect to make a living writing books. Writing press releases, magazine articles, or Simpsons scripts can pay the rent, but books rarely do.

So anyone who invests the large amount of time it takes to craft a decent novel or nonfiction book needs to be doing it for some reason other than money. If your reason is the love of the art, or because you want other people to read what you wrote, then giving away the fruits of your labor is a perfectly reasonable things to do. Given the odds against getting published (and the poor sales for most books which do get published), chances are you’ll be more widely read through a freebie than the traditional route.

On the other hand, if your goal is to be the next J. K. Rowling and earn a billion dollars from your books, then giving them away probably won’t do the trick (though there’s always the movie rights). But if that’s really your goal as a writer, you might want to take a reality pill first thing in the morning.

And now I see the book was nonfiction, don’t I feel dumb. But my comments still apply. You’re attempting a form of writing that can be very personally rewarding, in terms of being enjoyable to do and conducive to your personal growth, but it’s never paid well for most people.

Seriously — “the aesthetics of videogames?” You had about a one in a million shot at getting paid decently in any medium.

You want to eat? Help other people eat. That’s why journalism tends to pay better than book writing. It’s actually more directly helpful. Programming, esp the corporate kind, is an even better example.

If you are going to write something because that’s what you _like_ writing about, then write it, and stop acting like you’re doing it to live.

Doing something you like AND making money is not a right or even common. It’s lucky happenstance, and rate. Get over yourself.

rate=rare

@coldclimate

The wisdom of crowds? Seriously? People are still banging that? Take a look at what happens when TWOC goes mainstream: I give you YouTube’s Most Popular… currently featuring a clip from ‘MostMuscular.com’, two DragonballZ movies, a couple of pirated sports clips and a video entitled - I kid you not - ‘Eight teenagers invite girl over and beat her up’.

See anything you like? Good luck with that.

I feel your pain. Yours is one of the many professions made irrelevant and outdated by progress in technology. You are literally left behind.
But it does not matter what do you feel and how hard it is for you. Just like slave masters would cry seeing as their families are destroyed in the wind of change that took away their only income (slaves working on plantations), same will happen to many professions because of the internet and computers. Many more professions will not die but will be drastically morphed and changed. Like musicians who will have to work much harder than just selling albums. They will have to actually play their music live, and use recordings as a promotional material. Still musicians are the lucky ones. They will remain rich (although not as rich as before)
Ironically that would simply mean returning to the old ways they were living for ages before copyright.

You are taking copyright for granted. But for thousands years writers did not have any copyright protection. In fact it is a technology progress (movable type) that brought such a weird and unnatural thing as copyright into relatively short existence. And now same progress is going to kill it, and return to all people what was taken away from them in 1709. Right to copy everything they see and hear. Right that belongs to every human being. Our copyright.

Perhaps I could have tried distributing Trigger Happy the Radiohead way, making sure you had to pay a minimum to get the goods.

Actually, I’d like to point out that Radiohead’s minimum was the same as yours, 0.00.

The real reason I replied was because you asked for anyone who wasn’t a big thing that became a big thing through giving away their stuff on the internet. Jonathan Coulton. He gave away a song a week and claims to make a pretty good living of it now. I doubt that he would have (for example) gotten to do Still Alive for Portal had he already not made a name for himself with stuff like Code Monkey.

Now how often this will happen is the real question, but it does happen.

Let me add a data point for your experiment:

I downloaded your book but did not get a chance to look at it yet. I would not read it as a PDF as I don’t find it convenient and printing it from a PDF is currently more expensive than buying the actual copy.

I would not have used your paypal button because I don’t have a paypal account and I don’t want to have one.

And a few remarks:

Professional writers used to be paid a lump sum by the publisher for their work. Those publishers created the copyright system to ensure the exclusivity on the published material and prevent copy by other publishers. No digital anything at the time. Alternatively they had sponsors who cared about their legacy.

Finally, as a more general problem, you would have to prove that your position as a professional writer living from the royalties (and that is important because it is very different from the money you earn from the guardian) on your books is more important than accelerating the circulation of knowledge. If you could also throw in a solution for out of print books it would be greatly appreciated.

Another experiment would be giving away uncorrected galleys with the last chapter missing.

Of course, that would work better for fiction.

I think it is important to establish to people that you want to be paid. The idea that people will pay for things that are being “given away”, goes against everything they have learnt in their day to day lives.

The next time you try this you should give people a price. Make it fair and make it clear that it is what the book cost. Format the book so the last page has not only the ending but a request to be paid if the reader has enjoyed your work. If you made it clear when they downloaded it that you expected to be paid. I doubt it will be an issue for any one that finishes the book.

I don’t know about “comparable success”, but Jonathan Coulton is someone that has achieved a good deal of success without corporate promotion. Is he as rich as the two bands you mentioned? No. Is he able to make a good living off his work? Yes. He talks about it in an episode of TWIT (http://www.twit.tv/133). One of the things he made clear from the start was that he expected to be paid for his work.

Sure, paying for something when I have a choice not to is the “right” thing to do. But I’m weak! Give me an annual fee to pay!

Great article and great comments. As is argued by several other commenters, the “professional writer” is rapidly becoming an extinct animal. This will have some effect on the face of literature, perhaps we should expect shorter works… There will be winners and losers but I doubt scholarship and the arts will be much worse off.

Analogously for music, the album as a genre and the three minute pop song no longer have their reason for being in the record and the radio. Is the quality of music deteriorating? How many times in history have we heard the refrain that culture is in decline?

The existences of Wikipedia and the conversation of the blogosphere are evidence that the role of the solitary writer as the fountainhead of intellectual production is not only historically contingent but inessential.

I find this rather fascinating, especially as you point to the music model. I think giving music away works well, if people like what they see, and don’t think its over priced, they’ll pay. Printed word though, I can’t see that working. For music, download works well, CDs are over priced, and often you only want part of it, so downloads are the better choice. Books though, a person wants the whole thing, so making them available online provides little benefits to the author aside from getting copies out there.

So what’s the answer? Dunno, but I suspect the current model won’t last, there’s too many titles for any store to stock them all, which means that they’ll pick and choose who makes money in the business. How do you make everything available at a reasonable price in a store?

I only just found this site (via Daring Fireball), and I haven’t had a chance to look at your work yet. I can tell you I wouldn’t have sent you money, simply because I refuse to do business with PayPal. Too many things can, and do, go wrong with PayPal.

If you want people to give you money, you have to make it easy for them to do so. No one is going to give you money if it’s a hassle, or a risk, and they’re not obligated to do it.

Sadly, there’s not many good alternatives. Traditional credit-card processing imposes prohibitive fees on the vendor.

I’ve downloaded a few non-DRM e-books. It’s more convenient than leafing through the first chapter of a book in Barnes and Noble. I’ve never read an e-book end-to-end. If the work is good, I buy a hard copy. I’m also a “serial reader” — if I like an author, I tend to go buy as many of their works as I can find.

In particular, Baen’s policy of issuing backlist titles as DRM-free e-books has brought them a lot of my money. I’ve wound up purchasing entire series by authors that I would not previously have picked up off the bookstore shelf. That’s not something that can be easily accounted for with a spreadsheet.

E-books are convenient for some things. I suspect that people like me — the sort of person who can’t leave the bookstore without at least $60 in purchases — are also people who enjoy having the books on the shelf.

As a reader, my advice to authors is: Don’t hold on to the “value” of your work past its natural shelf life. It’s not likely that you’re suddenly going to become such a superstar that your back catalog starts selling again. At some point, it ceases to be a cash cow, and becomes your best advertising. Stop trying to milk it for all its worth. By turning it out to pasture on the Internet, you might lose some royalties. You will gain new readers.

(As for new works, yeah, a sample chapter is nice… but I agree that the “shareware” model is too risky when it’s paying the rent. Go ahead, make me pay for the paper copy… I just ask that you push your publisher, hard, to print the hardcover edition on acid-free stock — and real stock, not tracing paper. Especially if they’re going to ask me for $27 list.)

The Grateful Dead charged for albums, but encouraged fans to record and share concerts.

You know, Denis makes a good point: PayPal still scares some people off. If one could manipulate reality in a science lab, it might be interesting to rerun the experiment, this time adding alternative methods of payment (Amazon tips? More explanation as to the nature of the Make a Donation link?)

You may not be aware of this, you not being a software author (I assume), but downloads definitely do not translate to users. That is, 30,000 downloads doesn’t mean 30,000 people have read the book. Who knows how many actually read it all the way through? It’s definitely a fraction of your total download count. You’re lucky if a quarter of those people keep your software around. I’d assume that, similarly, an author would be lucky if a quarter of those people read past the first chapter. The analogy here is that a lot of people might pick up a book in the bookstore and browse it, but most of them put it back down out of disinterest. I think you need to adjust your expectations accordingly.

Your book also seems to be located in a niche of a niche of a niche: people interested in an academic discussion of video game mechanics as they relate to other things in history. At least, that’s the impression I get from the Amazon reviews. I don’t have time for that sort of other-person’s-navel-gazing, so I haven’t actually read it (or downloaded it).

Other questions you should be asking are: How does 30,000 downloads compare to the bookstore/Amazon sales figures? How much did I make off “tips” versus the bookstore/Amazon take? If I required payment for the book, but charged as much as Amazon does, and kept all the money myself, how much might I make?

The notion that you can’t get paid for professional writing is total bullshit, but you’re going to have step up your game. Write things for a wider audience. Write prolifically. And start with realistic assumptions. There is no free lunch on the Internet, and information may not want to be free, but there is certainly other information out there, so what makes **yours** so compelling?

I’d like to amend the last paragraph:

…but there is certainly other information out there freely available, so what makes **yours** so compelling that I should pay for it? And ‘because I said it is’ isn’t a good answer to that question.

I find it interesting that the only models that people are considering here are “free” and “paid for by the readers”. What about “paid for by patrons”?

Let’s say you’d like to take in $90,000 from a book, to cover a year of living plus the minimal expenses of distributing online. You could have all 30,000 of your readers paying $3 each, but that will never happen. Okay. What about 3,000 readers paying $30 each. Maybe, if you wrote something that really resonated with people.

But what about 300 people paying $300 each? Now we’re cooking. I would gladly pay $300 a year to support a single author whose work has had a significant effect on my life. Especially if that was my only book-related expense. I pay you $300 a year, and I get every other book in the world for free, because every other author has his own 300 patrons.

What if patronage became an accepted and expected part of the culture, something that people could publicly be proud of? I would see someone reading your book, I would feel the pride of ownership, I would proudly claim, “I sponsored that book!”, and be respected for that…

What if patronage served as a status symbol and a mark of style? People judge me today by my clothing and car, my job and my hobbies, the music I listen to, the goddamn wine I drink. What if I could somehow wear my sponsorships publicly, and be judged on those as well? What if patronage were fashionable?

Getting people to give up the “slashdot world” of FREE STUFF EVERYWHERE is impossible, because it goes against human nature. But paying to make a fashion statement is very much part of human nature. Can we harness that force to support our society’s artists?

Pre-internet by decades, Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle foretells a world where the physically adept are hobbled by weights and the smart have static-only radios locked onto their heads, so the uhhh, “challenged” have equal opportunities.

Rather than Vonnegut’s overly-PC state doing this to us, we have contracted with Triple Dub to do it instead. Everything is free but almost all is worth less than zero. Charging the receiver to pay a whole penny per gigabyte would go a long way to make people want what they get.

I think the real problem is finding how to stand out, to separate people who WANT your stuff, and have a modicum of cash, from those who are maybe curious but have no real desire for it. That really and truly IS harder now.

It’s not the people who claim everything ought to be free who are the problem. They may know what their work is worth, but their vote doesn’t really count. The problem is establishing a connection with somebody like me who’s happy to pay for material that I have reason to believe will be useful or entertaining. The NYT doesn’t write movie reviews of your stuff, nor do my buddies Andy and Robert.

It’s ironic that access — including some hypothetical net neutrality — is NOT the good that we hoped it could be.

I thought that was Harrison Bergeron.

Those who cannot or will not create have no respect for creation. The huge effort, and expense of intellectual and physical effort involved is beyond their ken. They have the vision that it just happens in an instant, a brain fart. Oh it is so glorious— i should write that down, or make that, or paint that, or play that… to be never worked beyond the ecstatic, momentary vision—it seemed so simple at the time!
Most of mankind will never realize the satisfaction of real creation; therefore they hold it of no value. So it should be free—consumers unite! We want it free and we want it now—like little ones entreating their parents for a popsicle. What a bunch of crying, infantile responders to your reasoned, plaintive question. Is this truly what we have become?
i too found you by way of Gruber! that funky star that is to be a fireball.

John Scalzi is someone you should talk to about this. He’s participating in the Tor e-books promotion. I can’t speak directly as I’m not a professional writer, but I recall Scalzi saying that downloads appear to generate sales of physical books, both of the title downloaded and also of other titles in his catalog.

He’s already an established fiction writer whose works sit on the shelves in Borders and B&N so your mileage may vary.

Here’s one post from Scalzi that I found quickly:
http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=432
He’s written about the Tor promotion several times, and also about Baen’s similar program.

“The problem is that the lifestyle sucks. You make X dollars an hour, and that’s it. You can’t rest on your laurels, because you have to keep working to get paid. No benefits. No holidays. Just hand to mouth.”

To the due who said that… welcome to the real fucking world. Most people on this planet trade hours for wages, that’s life, get over it.

Only a very few elite who happen to benefit from laws like copyright or patents that create artificial monopolies are ever able to “rest on their laurels” and continually profit from work done only once.

To the author of this post, interesting post, but information *is going to be free* whether you or anyone likes it or not. The world has changed, the people are connected in ways like never before, and *free information* is the genie out of the bottle. You can’t put it back, and it shouldn’t be put back.

The fact is information is free, and always has been, it’s the dissemination of that information that wasn’t, the publishing. Publishing used to have value, it cost money to print books, so a short term limited monopoly made sense, but those days are gone. Dissemination is no longer expensive, it’s virtually free and spreads like wild fire over the internet.

The natural consequence is that people and industries who evolved to take advantage the old system will die off in the new system. Look around, newspapers are dying, professional writing is dying, the music industry is dying, the movie industry is dying, because the simple truth is, *we don’t need you*.

These days, there are enough people writing and blogging for free, making music and video’s for free that the market will no longer support high priced professionals in large numbers. News papers are dying because their piggy bank, the want ads, are being killed by Craig’s list.

You want to make money as a writer, continue blogging, get a huge audience hanging on your every word, and throw up some ads to monetize the traffic. That’s how you make money writing while giving away your work for free in the modern age. If you can’t get enough traffic to live off the blog, then you should reconsider living as a writer.

I do write for a living, but the nature of my work is that I get paid to produce it and that’s it. There is something odd about someone continuing to get royalties for work only done once. Would anyone like to defend that?

Check out this great article on the same idea but looking at the concept of working or free from the perspective of independent programmers and whether they should give a way their apps for free.

“It Should Be Free?”
http://www.red-sweater.com/blo.....ld-be-free

Hi,
very interesting conversation.
I think the case for fiction is very different from other type of books, for example tech books : I’ve been quite happy for the “library” model used by O’Reilly’s Safari : pay a monthly subscription, get access to all the books.
I know as a reader I wouldn’t mind a cheap “time limited” access to fiction books : they are currently to expensive, takes too much shelf space (in their physical form), and most of them I won’t re-read anyway…

I’m going to agree with those who talked about the free posting of a back catalog. An 8 year old book probably isn’t going to be burning up the sales charts. If you got new stuff that relates to that, you should probably go ahead and release the earlier version with a nice big plug (”If you enjoyed this, ask your local bookseller for my new work…”)

As a counterpoint to Dave (”Those who cannot or will not create have no respect for creation.”) I’d offer this: Everyone thinks they can create, and everyone dreams of getting paid for it, but the truth is that those who consume the creation place a finite limit on how much creation can be paid for.

Recorded music, movies, TV, video games, board games, live music, plays, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs. How many things can one person reasonably consume in a month? In a year?

Technology is making the barriers to entry for creators lower and lower, and the niches that they can create in are growing daily. Each pulls from a pool of consumers, and some will cannibalize others. As a creator, you have to learn to adapt to this.

Scott (I create nothing, really, but I’m a heck of a consumer.)

Perhaps an advertising model for books would work. Authors could find advertisers to sponsor the work, and then the book can feature their message in a callout on every page.

Once you’ve done that, it becomes advantagous to get the book out in front of an audience as fast as you can, and you’re working with the distribution channel not against it.

The question is whether the numbers add up. Anyone know the ad industry enough to give some prices? Perhaps we could compare with magazines.

Note that the adverts also mean that the printed book becomes more attractive to readers as it is ad free.

@jhn : there’s nothing odd about royalties. If the value of a work in the marketplace turns out to be higher than the advance paid, then the person who actually created the work gets a share.

The alternative is that the writer would only get an advance, and if their book was a runaway hit, the publisher would keep all the profits. *That* seems odd to me.

You don’t specify what kind of writing you’re doing; if the market for a work is well-defined or time-limited and a runaway hit is unlikely, then royalties don’t make sense. However, if you have corporate paymasters who are reselling your work, selling translations of it, selling archive access and so on, and you’ve written it on a “work-for-hire” basis (which is a common situation), then it’s kind of sad that you can’t even see what the point of royalties might be.

To put it another way, would anyone care to defend a businessman getting rich off selling a book without sharing some of the proceeds with the writer? If you can’t see the point of royalties then that’s what you’re defending.

Of course, a lot of books don’t earn out their advance and so no royalties are involved anyway.

It’s an interesting, if slightly polarised question, and I think the comments here have more than answered it.

I will say this, though:

I build websites for a living. A good chunk of my day to day work is pure “creative output”. The company I works for gets paid in all of the manner of weird and wonderful ways people pay for sites, whereas I get paid a salary like any average Joe. (And, as it happens, I also write software and build web stuff in my spare hours, some of it open source, some of it not).

I’m increasingly struggling to see the fundamental difference between what I do and what you, or say, a pop artist does. The only difference is that I’m employed to do it and he company I work for deals with (and, if they do it right, profits from) the disparity between monthly salaries and contracted fees and the like. If I chose to go freelance, I’d be in the same boat as you: and guess what? I’d have to churn out new work on a regular basis if I wanted to get paid for it (and, having been there and done that, I can say fairly categorically that it wouldn’t stop me giving away open source stuff, either).

Does that answer the question?

I don’t think the Slashdot argument is that anyone who is creative (writing/composing/whatever) should be denied payment for their efforts, but simply that those who are going to be the most successful going forward are those that embrace a new business model, rather than continue to cling on by their fingernails to the old one.

There is a huge problem with that business mode though. This model is widely suggested by the open source community, and many people in that community like nothing better than to stick two fingers up at capitalism. It’s very ironic then that the model they suggest to earn money is one that ends up making you a corporate bitch, which is the last thing many people want.

The problem is that unless you’re big it’s hard to give away stuff. I write software for a living and sell it online. I can’t just give it away and ask people to pay me to improve it because I sell to consumers, creatives and small businesses. These aren’t really the people who pay to have software changed, these are the people who want to buy something off the shelf that does what they want already.

I think it’s telling that the majority of those who think that all forms of creative art (and I include software in that) should be given away for free are those who don’t create any of that art.

Thanks for the mainly thoughtful comments so far, apart from those who seem to think I’m complaining about having made nothing from the download. I’m not complaining: I expected nothing and got close to nothing. And, as I explained in the post, I think there’s no downside whatsoever in this transitional moment to giving away a book free, and very good arguments to do so: I would do it instantly with my newest book if I could. As it happens, about a month after releasing the download I received the biggest royalty cheque for Trigger Happy that I had seen for a long time, so it was still selling in the previous calendar year.

As for the people who say “What do you expect, it’s a niche subject, write something of more general appeal” — uh, that’s exactly the attitude that has publishers in trouble right now. Follow your rule and we’ll end up with nothing but trashy thrillers and cookbooks.

I think that the “Stephen King” model mentioned, where you charge money per chapter, is another version of the Radiohead/NIN problem — it worked for King because he was already Stephen King, having sold an awful lot of dead-tree books. I don’t see how it can work for a writer who doesn’t have that devoted fanbase already built-in, but I’d be interested to hear of others who have tried it.

Commenters are right to point out that the number of authors who make an adequate living solely from writing books is very small (and doesn’t include me). I guess the question is whether people are happy to see that number approach zero.

Maybe my favourite suggestion here is that for the reintroduction of patronage, which was indeed the main “business model” for writers, painters composers etc for centuries. Maybe we need someone to set up a shiny new Web 2.0 service to connect willing patrons with creators.

I look forward to checking out Jonathan Coulton & John Scalzi — thanks!

I feel for you Steven, seriously. What you stated is essentially fact: The freetards have no clear cut solution except to say the old ways wonʻt work, but weʻve got no clue as to how writing remains a valued skill.

The internet/slashdot freetards will say thereʻs no such thing as a “professional writer,” and these are primary those who have no respect for the arts or craft of writing. Writing to them is information. Information to them is not a craft or skill. Writing however remains a skill, that should be highly valued, but often is not. Why?

For one, density of material has devalued craft. Those who say “get over yourself” are the worst apologists of the freetards. Increased density of published works on the internet has not increased intelligence or literacy or quality. High quality is increasingly rare, especially with the increased freedom and number of self-published people on the internet. Itʻs counter-intuitive, which is why freetards ignore this fact.

What the internet has done is fed the western quick fix for instant pleasure. Human nature is to seek out those who agree with our own views. In that sense the internet hardly challenges most minds, only encouraging reinforcement of beliefs and, in those who create primarily for profit, perceived marketability.

The follow the crowd mentality increases mediocrity. Strong, individualist voices occasionally break through, but mainly because they adapt a homogenized and populist POV. Historically it seems the great, lasting works are often far from the common, particularly in fiction.

To say that an academic work of non-fiction relegates its author to a life of starvation however is not completely unfair. Intelligent non-fiction of any genre is not highly prized in western culture. Lowest common denominator rules the day in modern America/on the Internet, however unfortunate.

Sadly in the field of writing it seems even a sane and simple living wage is relegated to the very, very few, while insane gobs of cash are often thrown at those who make the most for the powers that be: Those who profit from selling to the lowest common denominators who are ironically, the quick fix, pleasure seeking, internet raised freetards.

I admire your perseverance, as I agree with your assessment of the give it away experiment, and I look forward to more of your thoughts as a professional writer regarding the changing landscape of publishing.

On the patronage front, it’s not quite the kind of thing you’re thinking of, but Calabash are starting an experiment in attempting to combine music, social networking and microfinancing called Tune Your World.

And there was the novel Fay Weldon wrote for Bulgari, though I don’t suppose product placement will be an available option for most writers.

One particular problem the music industry has is that they already sell music DRM-free, on CDs, so it’s harder to persuade people to buy crippled versions of the same files. That doesn’t apply to movies, since all DVDs have copy-protection; it will be interesting to see whether as movie downloading grows, they manage to avoid some of the same problems. But in that sense books are like DVDs: the format they’re sold in at the moment (i.e. paper) is not easily reproducible. You buy one copy, and if you want to share it with a friend you either lend it to them or you buy them their own copy. I think the publishing industry should be very cautious about establishing any kind of precedent that e-books should be any different.

You rail against the concept of free information, but do you believe that if this supposed utopia were to exist it would mean the end of professional writing? The same rule applies to you that applied to me when the desktop publishing revolution encroached on my ability to earn a living as a pre-press operator in the printing industry: if you can’t make money at it, find a vocation at which you can make money. If indeed the world needs professional writers and the internet is pushing them to extinction, your business model will become apparent.

Cory Doctorow is kind of the poster boy for the “new model” of how writers are supposed to make a living. It works if you’re Cory. Not sure how it works for everybody else. I had a long chat with him about this stuff. You can download the podcast (in three chunks of twenty minutes each) from my site wetmachine:

http://www.wetmachine.com/item/486/

When business models change, it’s a bitch. I’ve been a writer, or a manager of writers for a computer or software company, since 1980. I’ve written software and hardware manuals, magazine articles, marketing copy, a novel, novellas, and so on and so forth. I’m currently working as a ghostwriter on a book about software process management. In real terms, my income peaked in 1992 or so.

I believe I was the second person, after Cory Doctorow, to put his or her novels under Creative Commons license. In fact it was that old gadabout Cory himself who convinced me to do it. They’re available at http://www.wetmachine.com

I’m not rich yet.

My first job was with Data General, a giant “minicomputer” manufacturer. That company, and all others in its class are gone. Most recently I worked for Laszlo, makers of OpenLaszlo, a great, free, open source platform. I got laid off after 4.5 years. It’s hard to make money when you give away the product of your labor, whether you’re a person OR a corporation.

I’ve written a bunch of stuff for Salon.com, a fairly well-regarded “new media” outfit. The articles did really well, in terms of how many people downloaded them. I made about $.05/hour for writing them, but they did bring a measure of attention to my books.

All of which is to say that I don’t have any idea how to make a decent living as a writer, but that’s what I’m going to keep doing because I’m old and don’t see anything else that offers a better chance of financial success. At least when you self-publish your books, you can keep selling them indefinitely. And there is always the chance, however slim, that you’ll have some kind of big break-out success, a la J.K. Rowling. Especially if you go out into the world and sell your books in person.

If you see me selling my books from the trunk of my car at a truckstop on the Interstate, do be kind and buy one, won’t you?

But this brings up a lucky difference (for me) between music and books. Music distributed over the internet is indistinguishable from music distributed in shops.

this is actually an untrue statement. though most people also don’t know the difference. Digital downloaded music is at a much lower quality.

The music industry was sure that the quality was so low that on one wanted to hear it. The odd thing was the majority of people could not tell the difference.

Currently physical books are better then any other way to read a story. The tick is the next way to read books does not have to beat the book format… it just has to be close enough.

I know one example of a writer who makes her living only through writing online. Her biggest work, which I like a lot, is Tales of MU. I was going to write a big description of it here, but I would just be repeating the contents of the link. It is an ongoing story that updates five days a week (usually Monday through Friday), and if a donation goal is met, the writer, Alexandra Erin, writes a bonus story on the weekend. Erin used to have a “normal” job, but then she collected enough donations to support herself with the promise that if she reached a certain amount of money, she would quit her current job and write new chapters more often.

There is another sentence after this one, but for some reason it isn’t showing in the preview (maybe because it contains a second link), so I hope it appears in the actual post. This post in Erin’s blog contains her views and advice on making a living by writing online.

What I don’t get is that why creative professionals, artist, writers, record companies, publishing, newspapers etc are yelling that everyone else, the consumers, should come up with some new shiny business model that would rescue them. It’s your goddam business, it’s your job to figure that out. If my business was about to die, I wouldn’t count on some weed smoking artist’s help. You cannot blame it on technology or your customers. I don’t even belive that someone can come up with somekind of scheme in a economic vacuum. You have to think and try things out.

Things that can be copied, will be copied, and their value will come near to zero. Fortunately there is lots of things and attributes that cannot be copied. Check Kevin Kelly’s writings.

Stefan — good point; I should have said “indistiguishable to most people”. (I can hear the difference, as I mentioned in this post on headphones.) But the bitrates on offer vary: my copy of Ghosts I-IV in Apple Lossless format really is indistinguishable from a notional CD.

John — thanks for your comment. I certainly will. :)

enris wrote:

Things that can be copied, will be copied, and their value will come near to zero.

I think he meant “price” not “value”, but the confusion sure is revealing.

First, I won’t presume to have a solution to this dilemma.

We are living in a time where things are in a state of flux; I am not sure a great solution to this will present itself or not (does the flux settle down, or does it continue on?). I do a lot more reading nowadays, but my reading is done online through blogs.

As a blog reader, I’ve found people to read that I wasn’t presented with via the media but rather through linking and word of mouth. The reading I do is not fiction, for the most part, but when the end of the day comes, I’m not sure I have time or the will to read more. In other words, I feel for professional writers because suddenly, some of us have so much to read that reading books, ebooks, or whatever else that costs money, can’t compete with free blogs.

Right now, let’s say a book I just read and enjoyed was available in multiple formats: which would I choose?

- Hardcover
- Paperback
- PDF
- Interactive HTML
- Interactive HTML with multimedia

Here’s a spectrum; let’s assume they all “cost” the same. I’d go for the hardcover book or the interactive HTML with multimedia. By “interactive” I mean it’s organized so that it’s not one giant long webpage, and references to things are hyperlinked to respective webpages. By multimedia, I mean the text is enhanced with video, diagrams, and other content that otherwise can’t fit on a page in a book.

I’d also likely pay a premium for these two formats. Hardcover books are more expensive to make; flashy websites, with customized multimedia content, are more expensive to make.

In one case, I’m paying more because the material costs more. In the other, a portion of that extra work goes back to the author(s), but some of it goes to the publishers (web designers).

So, when the book becomes available in a free format, my mind wraps around the package. PDFs are cheap like plain copy paper. I’m not sure MY American mind wraps the concept of paying for something as money going to the writer/artist/performer. DVD? $20. Blue-Ray DVD? $30. I’m paying for the medium, not the message.

I hope we, as a society, figure this one out. I do believe, despite the way I have been trained to think, that the authors and artists should be paid handsomely for their work. But as you have pointed out, Steven, in your experiment, we seemingly value little your work. I did not download your work, but some did: they saw a deal when they saw your free PDF download.

I would be nice to know of all the downloads, how many were read, start to finish? Are we a benevolent enough society to all put donation buttons on blogs and websites to pay our writers? The buttons, sadly, may not get pushed.

Someone above commented that perhaps books ought to expire after a point in time, at which they are available for free. This echoes I think a short-term copyright idea.

I might tempt asking myself if I was willing to wait 3 years when I hear a new, great book has come out… I might be cheap. I don’t know. It’s tempting to be cheap.

I’m hoping that something like an iTunes model becomes available, and I think it will be tried (heck, it already is with Amazon’s Kindle). I might be able to pay for a book (let’s say $10) where $1 goes to the company providing the service and making the player (say, someone like Apple), and $9 goes to you, the author. If it had the extras I envisioned above in something interactive with added-value media, that might work.

Thanks for sharing with us your experience, and the conversation here is a good one to be having.

Hm, I actually donated (through a different pseudonym, obviously) - guess I won’t bother next time if you’re going to abuse the idealists.

The slashdot argument repeated here is the most radical of the many voices heard. I would say there is a general consensus that copyright is good, but certain specific rights holders have used legislation to allow them to hold their rights effectively in perpetuity. Many have used technology to degrade fair use rights and to nullify the public domain side of the exchange, i.e, Office 2007, which uses copyright to constrain the terms of your use of the software, will be public domain in 2107 and good luck finding a device that will read the disk and run the programs.) Copyright was never meant to guarantee ownership in perpetuity - it was never meant to be confused with a land deed.

Let’s also notice that most professional writers are not writing books for publishers, but are journalists, documentation writers, ad copy creators, etc.

I think your experiment showed a couple of things: the website, in days, attracted more attention from potential customers than the traditional sales channels did in months, and, donate-later was not an effective revenue-enhancing tactic. It says nothing about the need for DRM. By the way, that first item is huge. Clearly when effecting a sale, the buyer is engaging in a compulsive act and the money represents a gamble that the book is what it promised to be, either in entertainment or information value. Traditionally, a lot of money was spent in order to get that person into that store looking for that book.

The shareware software sellers learned quite a while back that use now, donate later means large distribution and insignificant revenue. So what’s the next step? Selling out of the car trunk? Okay, that’s a way to go, though you still have to figure how to get that car over to where significant concentrations of potential customers would be.

Before I filled the gas tank, though, I’d think about collecting the money before download and testing various price points. What about taking a tactic from Dickens: serialization and subscription? What about advertising and sponsorship, meaning the book looks a little bit like a magazine, but, increasing circulation numbers is the key to increasing revenues?

Hi Steven,

It seems to me that a basic problem is that you’re asking for a payment before people have read the book. If they don’t know your work they don’t know if it’s worth anything. They would be much more likely to pay after they read some of it and realize they like it.

So here is my suggestion. Split the book in two. The first part is free. The second part has a very low minimum price (10 cents?) but they have to type in an actual number and click a few times to get it. The minimum price (plus the effort of completing a transaction) should be just enough so that people who don’t know whether it’s worth anything won’t download both parts at once. A very low minimum makes it clear that they’ll have an easy decision about whether it’s worth that much if they like it even a little bit, and so they might as well download the first part. A minimum of 1 cent might be better than 10 cents for a paypal transaction, since it will be more obvious that this is just saying the value can’t be zero and they have to click through an actual transaction, not that 1 cent is the suggested price.

They then go off and read the first part. If they like it they will come back to get the second part, and those who come back will be ones who feel it’s worth something, so your chances of getting a reasonable donation should be excellent. You might want to word the price description something like, “can’t be zero; your support will help allow me to write more books.”

Incidentally, I would tend to make the first part be most of the book, rather than just a chapter or two. You want them to come back at a point where they’ve concluded that it’s a good book and they should pay for it, not at a point where they’ve merely seen a good premise or some dramatic tease.

Norm — very nice idea. I’ll definitely try that with a future release, either of Unspeak or of the book I’m currently writing.

James — thanks for your donation! As to the question of whether the people I’m abusing really are “idealists” or not, I’m still unconvinced.

Here’s a thought about the donation method:

Suppose I come to your site and downloaded your book, but I don’t leave a tip because I don’t like to pay for something that might suck. Further suppose that I then read it from beginning to end in PDF form. Depending on the length of your book and my reading speed, the elapsed time between me visiting your site and finishing your book could be anywhere from hours to months.

First the (hypthetical) good news: I love the book! I find it to be insightful and useful, and I even plan to refer to it frequently in the future. But here’s the bad news: it’s been weeks since I visited your site, and I don’t have much incentive to go back to it for the purpose of making a donation. Whether that’s because I’m lazy or just forgetful doesn’t matter — there’s a barrier that keeps my money out of your tip jar.

What if, instead, there were a link at the end of the book, embedded in the PDF, that went directly to your donations page? A short paragraph, printed in a larger font than the rest of the book, that says “I hope you enjoyed this book. A lot of work went into writing it, and your donations make it possible for me to continue writing. Click the button below to find out how you can support more books like this one!”

Well that’s a different story! I just finished the book, and with this link sitting right in front of me, I am inspired to donate while my appreciation for the book is still fresh.

I think I’m in agreement with some previous posters when I say that creating an expectation of payment is a good thing, even if you are relying on the honor system. Don’t irritate your readers with constant nagging, but don’t be shy about asking for money either. Make it visible, make it easy, and put it in front of the reader when they are most receptive to the idea.

I’m going to agree with those who talked about the free posting of a back catalog. An 8 year old book probably isn’t going to be burning up the sales charts.

This goes against the so-called “long-tail effect”. Old and obscure works, for example, that all two or three people buy, tend to make up almost 50% of total sales for online music store “emusic.com”.

This means that an enormous back catalogue can actually be quite profitable.

Bananaranha: I think the long-tail effect only kicks in once you’ve got some recognition in the first place. Gambling on your early works becoming lost gems that the public is willing to pay while you still aren’t earning enough money from your current works to eat properly is a bad bet.

I saw Jonathan Coulton mentioned, and he is my favorite example in the music space of being able to support a family while giving away his primary product. But he’s also a musician and Steven already talked about the difficulty of writers doing live concerts (Although I _did_ pay $50 to go hear David Sedaris read to me.)

I’d like to also point out the Penny Arcade guys (www.penny-arcade.com) as an excellent example of new-technology content producers that searched long and hard for a way to make their craft pay over the internet. Their archive is down at the moment, so I’m having trouble finding some of Tyco’s posts on the pain they went through finding a way to make writing and drawing a thrice weekly comic pay the bills. They’ve ended up with a bit of a juggernaut, though, as they now helm an international charity that raises over a million dollars a year for children’s hospitals and they run one of the largest gaming conventions in North America.

And while Enris said it a bit harshly, I think that the people who wait for the market to dictate a solution to them are going to be less happy (and less compensated) than those willing to find the solution themselves.

I like Jesse’s idea, but suspect you may make more money if interested readers have to come back. Not sure though, since completely voluntary donations at the very end may be larger.

One further thought. If you do split the book, you may want to give readers the option of downloading the whole book as a single file after they pay. They may not want to keep it as two pieces.

Jesse — done. :)

“Oh Mr Freetard, you work as a programmer, do you? How interesting. So do you perform all your corporate programming duties for free, and earn your keep by selling personally branded mousemats on the side?”

Sarcasm aside, I did work for years getting paid to write open-source software, which we then distributed to the world. (It was a small niche field, so “the world” meant “about 10 people per continent”, but even so.) Mousepads are a straw-man; I know many programmers writing free software and selling *useful* things, like support.

“But if there’s been a comparable success by a band that hasn’t already gained its cultural capital and name-recognition through the evils of copyright and corporate promotion, I’d like to know about it.”

I don’t really follow modern bands, but I know of many webcomics which have always published free online in the author’s spare time, and eventually sold paper editions and became the artist’s primary job. I have no idea if it would work for other things (comics sometimes seem almost designed for marketing), but it’s not inconceivable.

All but one of the webcomics I read today are now self-sufficient. (The one that isn’t is interesting but rather poorly drawn.)

Tough love time:

The world of comics seems to be getting new life because people are falling over themselves to re-invent it for the internet. (Hi, Scott McCloud!) The only shake-up I’ve seen in the written word has been with blogging, and a few bloggers do earn a living at it. If the reinvention of the book for the 21st century is “drop a PDF on the web”, it doesn’t seem at all surprising to me that it’s not taking off any more than “drop an MP3 on the web” did. Even Leonardo wouldn’t have made a living with “drop monalisa.jpeg on the web”. How are you going to reinvent books?

I write for love, but I publish for money. — Vladimir Nabokov

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy. — Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media

If you’re going to write, I think that in many instances you’ll write regardless of whether you’re paid or not. At least now everyone has a printing press (read: weblog), so everyone potentially has an audience. The issue arises in getting people’s attention.

If you’re a really good writer a Real Publisher(tm) will publish your works. If not, you’ll be slogging away and no one will know you. With weblogs, PDFs, and print on demand books you can potentially get people’s attention in an easier and cheaper way than a large marketing budget.

I think downloads are a useful tool in marketing, but it may not wok in all situations. For an author’s first few books, PDFs may actually be necessary to get people interested. There are so many books published each year that it would be impossible to purchase (or even borrow from a library) even a small percentage of them.

Once you’re semi-established, or perhaps if you’re known “ahead of time” through a well-visited weblog, then a sample chapter or two may be enough to wet people’s appetite.

Anyone who’s quite well-known (Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Jane Jacobs, etc.) wouldn’t need to do anything as they have a “fan base” that will pick up any new book and help generate buzz to introduce new readers to the author. As a good-will gesture, it may be a good idea to release a book in electronic form a few years after the first publishing date. If you’re not making a lot on “long tail” sales, then getting people’s attention for future books could be worth more.

For musicians (and perhaps other types of artists), there are other venues to generate income. So while they’re living in obscurity, giving out audio files gets the word out and buzz for their tour. A few links to an online music store (for higher quality files perhaps) could then useful to get some cash. Once they have a bit of a fan base, the ratio between free and paid-for content can be looked at again.

I think each creator needs to determine for themselves how much they want or need to generate publicity versus getting money for every copy (physical or digital) of work that is distributed. Needless to say, it’s the copyright holder’s right to determine how their work is sent out to the world, but in the modern world, making copies (legal and illegal) has become a whole lot easier, so that now has to be taken into account in any decision.

// I can’t have a very constructive opinion on this phenomenon, because (and please forgive me) I’ve never seen any of this stuff that was actually any good

Some of Paul Graham’s essays are among the best and most thought-provoking words ever stored, on any format. He has a quite unique style of writing, as he always intentionally discards everything that is beside the point or clearly true, leaving only the controversial bits, this makes reading his writings a true exercise for the mind. For a single example, I recommend “What you can’t say”

The second you equated copyright with ‘righttoeat’ you lost me as a reader, and I’m sure many others.

You think you have some divine right to live off a crummy aged book about a quickly changing industry?

I wonder if the people who actually can’t eat in countries like ethiopia, or hell, even in the U.S.A feel like if they jot enough words down on paper then they will have fulfilled their duties to society, and will get fed.

My guess is, they don’t

The fact is, most people downloaded it for free because there is virtually NO value attached — for good reason. It’s a novelty item that noone would have wanted if it cost even 5 cents.

Furthermore, this isn’t news. Everyone in the publishing industry understands that you will not sell to certain people. Those people will borrow the book from a friend or library, copy it some other way, or just not read the damn thing.

They never EVER intended to pay for it, so if you have a problem with that then you shouldn’t ante up your bandwidth to these people.

I think you need to find a different industry, or learn to cope with the fact that you are never going to get paid for every reader.

Oh yeah, I should add that I don’t ever download movies or books or music or anything illegally. I find what I like that is free, and I find the cheapest legal source for the rest.

I just wanted to make sure you understand that I’m not a freetard, although I still think you’re a retard.

On a busy corner in São Paulo, Brazil, street vendors pitch the latest “tecnobrega” CDs, including one by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That’s OK, because selling discs isn’t Calypso’s main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet.

The vendors generate literal street cred in each town Calypso visits, and its omnipresence in the urban soundscape means that it gets huge crowds to its rave/dj/concert events. Free music is just publicity for a far more lucrative tour business. Nobody thinks of this as piracy.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/i.....rentPage=5

Steven: I’m sure there’s politer names than calling them “freetards”.

James — I’m sure you’re right. I guess I picked that up from Fake Steve and didn’t think too hard before using it. After all, this is a blog not a book. ;)

You might want to look up David Wellington, who writes horror fiction serials on his blog and has gone on to do pretty well in print.

I’m a musician and I’ve given away songs for free online since at least 2000, alongside CDs and other material I do sell. It doesn’t pay my rent, but I can say that I’ve made