There you are, sitting on the bus, reading an interesting book about current events on your iPod, when suddenly, pirouetting Tampex® swirl across the screen. Maybe they are singing a little ditty about how easy they are to insert. Once their dance is finished, a large link appears. Clicking on it will send a coupon to your inbox for your next purchase. You must accept or decline the offer or you won’t be able to continue reading.
Very shortly, publishing will adopt the TV model, where very little money is made unless and until ads are sold. The actual content is valueless and disposable (though monetizable if successful). In fact, this model goes further than TV. Google, Yahoo and other platform owners swipe any and all content, and frequently do not acknowledge the author. It is up to a publisher—who has become a content rights tracker instead of a packager of information—to keep up with where the IP (Intellectual Property) they represent is, and collect any fees due.
Self-published now means that the author is directly responsible—and most writers adopt this model. They miss a lot of their content, but they’ve cut out the “middle man” publisher. And of course, their work is “out there,” which, they will tell you when pressed, is all they care about anyway. No matter that they are not paid.
No, it’s not such a far-fetched future scenario. Some of it is already happening.
Almost anyone who has posted articles on the Web has later discovered their material on other sites and blogs. One of my authors, who is an Orthodox Jew and whose subject matter is anti-cursing, found her material on a porn site. Another author found her material on some woman’s site—which was now suddenly sporting the website owner’s name as the writer. When the author challenged the website owner—both personally and through a lawyer—the content was taken down, but not without the all caps diatribe that
“SOME PEOPLE THINK THEY OWN THEIR WORDS.”
New permutations spring up all the time. Just this past week, Amazon started hosting blogs on Kindle (for a fee). And immediately several blogs were swiped and monetized.
Do not even start me on the Google book grab – which was so egregious the government stepped in. I’ll let cooler and more informed heads weigh in on that idiocy.
Be clear here: I am not against digital distribution of content, or new ways of getting to our audience/readers/buyers. A lengthy article in the New York Times says customers are demanding that e-books be priced at no higher than $9.99—and I’m OK with that price point. On the other hand, I am of two minds about DRM. I don’t like that it locks out my reader, but I don’t have much interest in feeding the “information must be free” people.
There has to be a middle path.
I had hopes for the subscription model that was stirring about 4 years ago, but has since withered and died. That would have allowed a customer to pay a set fee to download X-amount of content from a site. The content would be active on whatever platform they preferred for a month, then automatically deleted. Longer contracts (i.e. a permanent buy) could also be purchased.
I don’t work for nothing. I am a writer, author and publisher. I am not satisfied that my work, or the work of my authors and clients, is “out there.” I want to be paid for my time and brain-sweat. I accept that to some, this is an antique point of view. I just don’t buy a communitarian intellectual property model. If I make widgets, no one objects if I get money for selling them. So why should the less tangible efforts of my mind be valued less?
Publishers need to get together and take back some control of this process, or the decision will be made for us as it was for music. I’d love to get some publishers together to have a forum about this. Anyone up for it?
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Jun 18 09 5:36 am
About selling content digitally: I keep coming to two assumptions:
1. Creators deserve to be paid for their work, if it is of value to the community.
2. The community decides (by what they buy or don’t buy) what is of value.
It would be impossible to stop the flow of creators who just want to be “out there” and provide free content. Yet that free content changes the price expectation for digital works.
The harsh view: If you can’t convince the marketplace of your value as a creator (and get paid), then perhaps you need to find a more useful line of work.
The hopeful view: We can create a process by which writers and artists can convince readers of the value of their work, and be paid fairly.
Soon, I suspect the slush piles won’t end up on an editor’s desk, but on everyone’s computer desktop. Not all readers will have the time or patience to wade through the digital slush pile, so readers will need some way to consistently find material they like, perhaps that is how we provide perceivable value.
An identifiable brand, with consistent products like Romance or Sci Fi content might be successful. Consumers just might be willing to pay content if it is very likely to be something they will enjoy and they don’t have to spend hours searching for it.
And consumers may just be fine with the advertising model. We seem to have adapted to in other media.
Jun 18 09 8:06 am
It’s the tendency to de-value intellectual property that truly concerns me. That includes movies and music. How do we re-educate the public that imagination must be paid for?
I really don’t care for the crowd-sourcing editorial board you propose (not bashing you. It’s a thought that’s being played with by many). Crowds tend to lean toward a conservative, no/low-cost option. Which is why we got VHS and not Betamax (which was clearly superior). It also accounts for why, say, Danielle Steele, is still being published when she is so awfully bad. There are so many wonderful writers out there who deserve to be noticed, but, Americans in particular, tend to go with “brand names.”
I am trying to sort out what I think about this proposed “curation” model for publishers. It sounds like the same old thing wrapped in new paper. But I don’t have enough information to make an arguement for or against it. When I do, I’ll do something on the blog.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
JCS
Jun 19 09 10:03 am
JCS
Thanks for your response. Thoughtful debate is helpful as we all try to figure this out.
SN