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There's lots of discussion of late among SFWAns about giving writing away for free online, with various arguments against it. One is that it hurts those trying to make a living at writing.
My own experience shows that posting parts of works online helps develop interest among readers and create potential new readers. For example, I've given away most of my previously published poetry, because, well, it's not as if I'm getting rich from poetry. Because I did this, a singer-songwriter decided to turn one of the poems into a song, thereby allowing the poem to earn more than it ever could have in print.
I worked for Microsoft as a writer years ago, before electronic publishing was a big deal. My team, the Server Resource Kit, wanted to give away our documentation for free to the Server customers because, well, they're big-dollar customers and supporting them is expensive. The main argument was that we should give them the info they need in advance to save Help-Desk calls later, plus it builds customer satisfaction (you might see this as "reader loyalty" from the fiction-writer's perspective). Microsoft Press, our paper publisher, fought tooth-and-nail against the idea because they made something like $50 million/year from the Resource Kit. Because Server made several $billions/year, Press lost that argument. A memorable exchange: [Server V.P.]: "Fifty million?" He reaches into his pocket and pulls out some coins. "We earn Xbillion a year. Fifty million is pocket change."
And you know what? We sold more printed books after giving them away than before.
Just a couple of anecdotes.
Sure, I fear the coming of electronic publication, because look what's happened to the music industry when music went digital and people started sharing songs with their friends (read: "ripping and giving away free copies"). But a lot of new musicians are now getting recognized because of people stealing and sharing music.
How will things turn out for individual artists when all information finds a way to be free? Will artists be able to make a living doing their work in the near future?
What are your thoughts?
Chris
My own experience shows that posting parts of works online helps develop interest among readers and create potential new readers. For example, I've given away most of my previously published poetry, because, well, it's not as if I'm getting rich from poetry. Because I did this, a singer-songwriter decided to turn one of the poems into a song, thereby allowing the poem to earn more than it ever could have in print.
I worked for Microsoft as a writer years ago, before electronic publishing was a big deal. My team, the Server Resource Kit, wanted to give away our documentation for free to the Server customers because, well, they're big-dollar customers and supporting them is expensive. The main argument was that we should give them the info they need in advance to save Help-Desk calls later, plus it builds customer satisfaction (you might see this as "reader loyalty" from the fiction-writer's perspective). Microsoft Press, our paper publisher, fought tooth-and-nail against the idea because they made something like $50 million/year from the Resource Kit. Because Server made several $billions/year, Press lost that argument. A memorable exchange: [Server V.P.]: "Fifty million?" He reaches into his pocket and pulls out some coins. "We earn Xbillion a year. Fifty million is pocket change."
And you know what? We sold more printed books after giving them away than before.
Just a couple of anecdotes.
Sure, I fear the coming of electronic publication, because look what's happened to the music industry when music went digital and people started sharing songs with their friends (read: "ripping and giving away free copies"). But a lot of new musicians are now getting recognized because of people stealing and sharing music.
How will things turn out for individual artists when all information finds a way to be free? Will artists be able to make a living doing their work in the near future?
What are your thoughts?
Chris
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I think that the bell curve will become flatter but wider. It's already beginning to happen with music, which is the medium least dependent on physical objects. More and more artists are getting exposure over the internet and the charts are far less dominated by those chosen by the executives.
The stubborn resistance to change to a new business model is costing artists in the short term. A lot of the executives know their money is soon running out. They've made far more off the profits of music and media than many of the artists producing the product.
Now, with the internet allowing media to be promoted and distributed withou the vast companies and distribution lines, it's much cheaper and easier to produce a piece of work - meaning that essentially a band (like Lily Allen or other artists discovered from their home recordings on myspace) can produce their own product and sell it. I think as soon as one or two big bands produce their own mp3 selling site and move away from the record companies entirely, there will be a huge sea change that will change the music industry overnight. Because they don't need to pay 1000s of employees or produce any physical objects, the cost to the band of selling their music is limited to recording the song and the bandwidth to upload it to customers.
That means the artist can afford to charge less for the mp3s and therefore it's more likely that people will buy them (if they were 25c rather than 99c, i wouldn't be surprised to see more money being made, we're definitely not at the sweet spot at the moment) This will make it easier for bands to make a living selling their own work as they'll probably end up making more money per track than they do now with the measly percentage of royalties offered by the execs.
Books is harder to analyse as there's no winning digital version, and films are a few years off being in a similar situation. But I think eventually that's the way it'll go. We'll see more self-financing, self-promoting artists making a decent wage and less company-pushed superstars.
It's a nice ideal to aim for, anyway. I managed to include the effect happening to music in my fictious blog miawithoutoil for the collaborative world without oil fiction project and it seemed to go down well. (http://miawithoutoil.livejournal.com/3966.html)