Entries tagged with “free models” from Tools of Change for Publishing
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 28, 2008
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Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1) (Vin Crosby, Digital Deliverance)
Contrary to myopia of many newspaper executives, advertisers aren't newspapers' primary customers. Although advertising revenues may be sunshine for newspaper executives, the roots of their business are readers. A newspaper with readers will attract advertisers but a newspaper without readers will not. Readers ultimately support and sustain the newspaper business.
(Via E-Media Tidbits)
The Customer is Always Wrong (Richard Nash, Ecstatic Days)
... there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her -- we'll get the book onto their shelves, we'll pay them some payola, and then it's their problem. Of course it's not, and not just because we're in the only business where 100% of the product can be returned for full credit. It's because fundamentally a publisher's job is to connect the writer to the reader. Not the book to the retailer, but the writer to the reader. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
On Writing For "Free" (John Scalzi, Whatever)
... the point to make, again, is that "free to the reader" is not the same as "unpaid to the writer." I have gotten paid for the fiction I've put online. I do get paid for it. And, barring a sudden windfall of cash that obviates the need of me having to worry about money ever again, I will continue to make sure I get paid for it. And naturally I encourage other writers to make sure their own economic interests are served when they have stuff put online that is free for readers to view.
(Via TechDirt)
Author Paulo Coelho Illustrates the Upside of Openness
Mac Slocum
August 7, 2008
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Budding authors may not be able to duplicate the success of Paulo Coelho, but Coelho's willingness to experiment across mediums is certainly worth studying. From Jeff Jarvis' Guardian column:
Coelho is the thoroughly modern author. But he still believes in print. For him, this isn't a matter of print v digital. It's a question of what comes when you add digital to print. What does it bring him? "It gives me a lot of joy," he said, "because writing is something you do alone." He recalled the night in 2006 when he read that he had become the second best-selling author in the world. He was bursting. "My God, my wife is sleeping. How can I share this news with anybody?" Now he can shout it from the mountaintop of his blog.
Coelho's embrace of digital outlets is liberal, even by Web standards. In addition to his blogging and social media efforts, Coelho set up a site that aggregates P2P links to free (pirated) versions of his books. He briefly discusses his P2P moves in a New Statesman column:
... I knew from previous experience that the free-sharing of my book over the internet would increase its visibility, so I didn't hesitate to post it on peer-to-peer websites and on my blog.
The more I've ventured into the virtual world, the more I have realised that the internet has a logic of its own and its credo is: share everything freely.
Tor.com Woos Sci-Fi Fans with Free Ebooks
Mac Slocum
July 23, 2008
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Taking a page from the Baen playbook, Tor.com, a division of Macmillan, is giving away 24 science fiction ebook titles through July 27. The ebooks are available in PDF, HTML and Mobi formats.
Artist Brand Building: An Idea Born from Free Debate's Middle Ground
Mac Slocum
July 10, 2008
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Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur and a critic of free models, says publishers can carve a niche by helping writers build their personal brands. From The Bookseller:
Keen said that publishers should not be seduced by the new technologies but use them to build brands, and nurture the expert through live events. "The future is the expert," he said. It was no longer about the copy, the selling of the book, Keen said, but about managing the talent. Addressing publishers, he said, "you are the nurturers of talent, and you will have to convince the creatives that you can build their brand."
Free model advocate Mike Masnick has been pushing a similar "big business as brand builder" option for record companies:
Some musicians can try to go it alone, but for many it doesn't make sense. These new business models still require plenty of business smarts and the ability to do marketing -- and that will require experts in those areas. It's just that the expertise needs to be in applying those skills to the new business models (using the content as promotional material and selling scarce goods), rather than the old model.
I find it interesting that the diametrically opposed Keen and Masnick and both discussing similar solutions for traditional content companies. Perhaps the middle ground of the free debate is where the fertile ideas lie.
Will Magazines Go Free?
Peter Brantley
June 30, 2008
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Jennifer Armor, audit manager at Verified Audit Circulation, makes the case for free magazines. From Folio:
Because of the increasing price of paper and postage, Armour said, the cost of acquiring and keeping paid circ is becoming too high compared to the revenue it generates, and therefore, consumer publications will eventually move to a controlled circ model. Only magazines with premium content that can't be found elsewhere will be able charge their readers.
Using the Psychology of Free
Mac Slocum
June 25, 2008
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A recent piece in the New York Times notes that Google and Yahoo have mined the combined power of "free" and "good enough" to challenge high-priced financial information services from Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg:
Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg face common enemies in sites like Yahoo Finance and Google Finance, which offer a much lower level of sophistication and depth but are improving and are, after all, free. [Emphasis added.]
This passage touches on the psychology of free, which is one of the most interesting but under-examined aspects of the free meme. Getting something for nothing activates a human response that's different from a normal business transaction -- it just feels better. Perhaps it's the novelty of acquiring without a concession (financial or otherwise), or maybe we're just hardwired to love free stuff.
Understanding this psychology even in a basic way (which is all I claim to know) gives free models more lift. In simple terms: A free product comes with low expectations ("hey, it's free!") and neutral perceptions ("what's the worst that can happen?"). If that product proves useful, expectations are exceeded and perception elevates from neutral to positive ("it's free and it's cool/useful/interesting, etc.").
On the development side, a free product doesn't need to be deep, robust or even fully formed. For example: A high-priced pay-to-access version of Google Docs would have invited negative comparisons to established word processing programs, but free access allowed Google Docs to be accepted as a useful Web tool with a surprising number of features, particularly for a free application.
If you extend free psychology into the publishing realm ... a publisher can use free, no-frills content to build buzz around a particular author, title or topic. This could take the form of HTML-based books hosted on a publisher's site, or basic ebooks with minimal production. And if this free material offers readers even a modicum of enjoyment, neutrality turns to positivity and the overall impression of that author, title or topic grows stronger.
These rudimentary musings on free psychology might seem obvious, but the equation of free + good enough = improved chance of success is often obscured by concerns over reliable revenue streams and clear business models (which is understandable since both are in short supply in the free universe). But this equation -- and the opportunities that come with it -- is built on the deeper psychological aspects at play in free models, and it's these aspects that need to be examined before any free-related decisions are made. A project's real upside may lie in its ability to create emotional responses, and a free mechanism could be the catalyst for those reactions.
Putting Ebook Piracy into Perspective
Mac Slocum
June 10, 2008
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Adam Engst from TidBits offers a comprehensive rebuttal to David Pogue's concerns about ebook piracy. Among the many notable points:
... the harder you make it for someone to buy an easily replicated digital commodity, the more likely they are to share that commodity as a way of making things easier for others. Look at the parallels in the music industry. Apple made legitimate purchases of music both easy and inexpensive via the iTunes Store, and anyone who was on the fence about whether it was acceptable to share music suddenly had a viable alternative. Providing a legitimate purchase path for electronic versions not only generates revenue, but also reduces illicit copying.
The teeth gnashing associated with publishing's transition to digital continues to obscure an important -- and simple -- point: publishing isn't the first industry to confront digital issues. Businesses in the music, film and media worlds have been tackling these concerns for years, and there are important lessons to be learned from their failures and successes.
Engst's argument about ease of use -- especially as it relates to iTunes -- deftly illustrates this. Regardless of your opinion of iTunes and Apple, it's hard to argue with the equation they've developed: make money by giving people easy access to quality digital material. This trail has already been blazed; publishers just need to pay attention.
On another topic ... Pogue's post cites two examples of scammers who, posing as blind readers, requested book PDFs and then copied them to piracy sites within 48 hours. Engst's experience with piracy is considerably different:
I have found our ebooks available for download on a handful of occasions; each time it was someone who had put the file on a server without realizing it was open to the public or who was transferring the book from work to home and had forgotten to take it down. I periodically search the file sharing services too, but it's exceedingly rare to find any of our ebooks there, and those I have seen were wildly out of date.
In short, far from the foregone conclusion that publishing an electronic book will result in rampant copying, our years of experience show just the opposite.
Engst notes that his company's subject matter (tech) and its size (small) likely minimize piracy, but there's an underlying point in this passage that's relevant on an industry-wide scale: blanket statements about the ills of piracy -- or the opportunities from piracy -- fail to recognize the nuances at play.
Whether we're discussing Pogue's run-in with "blind" con artists or Engst's limited issues with accidental piracy, it's important to remember that singular examples do not define trends (or unmask ebook cabals). Publishers need to look at ebook distribution, and the potential for piracy, on a case-by-case basis. To paraphrase Tim O'Reilly, certain titles from certain authors may benefit from increased exposure of any sort (that's the idea behind this experiment), but well-known authors with blockbuster titles might be undercut by widespread copying.
When it comes to piracy, free, and other unusual models, the only real mistake is embracing a closed-minded, all-or-nothing perspective. Doing so limits both the threats and the opportunities.
Engst's post touches on a variety of other piracy-related topics, all of which are worth considering.
Essential Points in the Free Debate
Mac Slocum
June 2, 2008
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Expanding on "free"-centric discussions from Steven Poole and David Pogue, TechDirt's Mike Masnick argues that free experiments are only valuable if they're backed up by business models:
The basic problem is this: they hear about the importance of "free" and so they give something away for free. But they don't have a business model around the free content. They don't understand the economic forces at work. They just give stuff away and pray ... and then whine when nothing happens. As we've pointed out before, no one says that "free" by itself pays the bills. You need to have a more complete strategy than that -- and it involves a lot more than "give it away and pray."
Poole, Pogue and Masnick all support their cases (whether you agree or disagree likely depends on your overall take on free), but what I find interesting about some of these recent pieces is the tonal shift: there's an edge to them, and I'm not entirely sure where it comes from. It could be the alternative nature of free (giving stuff away is anathema to some), or maybe it springs from the odd mixture of frustration and opportunity that's swirling around the broader transition to digital. It could also emanate from ancillary topics like piracy and fading industries.
The problem with edgy discussions is that the edge generally overwhelms the core topic. And when you're dealing with an already ambiguous concept -- such as free -- distraction is even more disconcerting.
That said, there are a number of salient points within these recent posts, and each deserves to be called out:
- Free needs to be judged contextually. As Tim O'Reilly wrote in the past, free is more complicated than it initially seems, so it must to be examined amidst the goals of a particular company.
- A single experiment -- whether successful or not -- does not signify a trend. A variety of experiments need to be conducted to get a true handle on free's utility.
- Free requires an outcome. As Masnick notes, and as we've discussed here, an experiment without a strategy won't yield anything useful. Free needs to be part of a broader plan, and that plan should be thought out before giveaways begin.
- Free is one of many potential adaptations. As digital industries mature and revenue streams become more fruitful, additional models will likely form. These models deserve the same level of inquiry. Companies might find that an aggregate approach yields the best results.
- Finally ... free isn't fully formed. All viewpoints and trial runs deserve at least a passing glance.
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