Nearly everyone in the media world in some form or another is grappling with one huge, massive, essential question: what should content cost in the digital era?
On one side you have the freevangelists (TRADEMARKED MUST CREIDT NATHAN BRANSFORD OMG) like Cory Doctorow who see the benefits of free and shared content in terms of building audiences, and believe that the only way forward is to follow what consumers want: online content (sometimes, if not always) for free, and definitely without DRM. Best be brushing up on your ancillary revenue streams. (more on DRM here)
On the other side you have the publishing establishment, who is looking at their P&Ls and concluding that e-books aren’t really that much cheaper to produce than a book when you consider overhead like editing, copyediting, production (cover, typesetting, etc.), marketing, sales, rent, etc. HarperStudio asserts that an e-book is only about $2.00 cheaper to produce than a paper book, and thus, any drastic price cutting for e-books will be eating away at already-slim margins.
I don’t doubt that free is great for the freevangelists like Cory Doctorow and Chris Anderson. They’ve done quite well by building their ancillaries (such as huge blogs) and benefit from the fact that they’ve been able to build a gratified audience base by giving away content. I also am sympathetic to concerns that DRM is completely annoying for the majority of consumers who want to use their content legitimately. And if publishers can make a mass market paperback original profitable when it’s priced at $6.99, surely they can make e-books work under $10.00.
But are we really comfortable with a publishing world where authors and publishers are expected to, essentially, give content away and build revenue instead through ancillary streams?
And in defense of DRM, are you (as writers, not consumers) really comfortable with a theoretical world where a book can be downloaded (cheaply no doubt) and instantly e-mailed to 1,000 of the purchaser’s closest friends? Sure, someone who has too much time on their hands can pirate a book and do precisely the same thing. But particularly when e-books become the main game in town (which is coming), should we really make sharing e-books as easy as 1 2 3? It’s not the same thing as passing around a tattered paperback to one friend at a time.
Count me as someone with my feet firmly stuck in the muck of skepticism about a brave new world of overly cheap and unencrypted books. Maybe it’s coming anyway and at 28-years-old I’m already a dinosaur. Maybe all the free blogs and content out there will make people reluctant to part with $24.95 or even $14.95 for a new book and the model is broken. Maybe DRM needs to be eased, even if it’s not done away with entirely. Better yet, maybe e-book providers can use Peter Olson’s suggestion of demand-based e-book pricing and create a pricing algorithm where a book that’s downloaded 1,000 times a week costs $14.95 and a book that’s downloaded 2 times a week costs $2.95.
I don’t think free (or close to free) works for everyone. But is free inevitable?
Marilyn Peake says
I sincerely hope that eBooks will never be free and never made available without protection from copyright infringement, except for freebie versions that authors choose to give away. I’m thinking that eBooks should be fairly inexpensive, especially without the current bookstore return policies. On Fictionwise, eBooks from the large publishing houses tend to be priced under $10, and eBooks from the small publishing houses tend to be priced around $6.
Bane of Anubis says
Were I entreprenurially-spirited, I’d start a venture, a la Hulu, where e-books could be downloaded freely, but would have advertisements spread throughout… The Google model; if a person wished to download a book free of ads, that would be charged (and DRMed)… or something along those lines.
Fre-ebooks will happen eventually, but there will always be a revenue stream attached.
RW says
The future is impossible to predict, but there is one lesson from what has gone on with the music industry that I’m heartened by. “Alternative” revenue streams has in many cases meant a very old-fashioned revenue stream–performing concerts. In the top-down, big distribution company era, performing was a loss-leading promotional tool to sell records. It was bad for fans of live music and bad for smaller bands and thus bad for the overall artistic environment. The long-tail era is starting to mean the reverse–MP3s and CDs are promoting the work of live musicians who make their money by performing. Which has been good for fans, for the small bands. The overall musical experience has been much improved I think. It’s bad for Warner Brothers and it’s bad for their top acts maybe, but the tops don’t more money as much as the world needs more music and smaller acts need a chance to do their thing.
The analogy to writing and publishing isn’t perfectly clear, but I think what this tells us is that thinking creatively for alternative revenue streams is the only way to go.
A crumb of food for thought–Mark Twain and Charles Dickens didn’t get rich in publishing. They got rich touring and speaking. That doesn’t suit every writer’s situation, but it is was once a viable alternative revenue stream. Maybe it will be again.
the Amateur Book Blogger says
Basic economics says where something has a cost to produce and a value to the customer, we will not reach a point where it will all be available for free. However, I think today’s pricing model for books, starting with a high price end hardback for example, will change dramatically as e-books become available quickly – and there will not be the time delay between hardback, trade, paperback and e-book. If people don’t have to wait long to pay less, they won’t pay more up front. E-books should reflect the cost of production fairly and be stable, not based on demand – as their is negligible warehousing or dispatch costs.
A leading Publisher recently stated that in their British supermarket research books did not sale more copies priced at less than 3.99. That became their discount cut off point.At that point the had reached the highest volume of sales met the highest price people would pay, and achieved the best ROI.
The Olson suggestion of high demand could end up with book pricing being as reliable as airline pricing – and we all know how frustrating that can be.
I think free has its place in samples and building a market – Paulo Coelho says he sold more copies having made his content available to read for free, but not to download.
As for free e-sharing – it doesn’t seem fair, but how do we prevent the market going the same way as music? The only think I could think of is to pay by deduction through an account on incoming machine for pay-only content. Ie: your Kindle recognises that X book is not a freeware, and asks you to confirm payment before downloading.
Vancouver Dame says
“I don’t think free (or close to free) works for everyone. But is free inevitable?”
I agree, free won’t work for the writers/authors who want to make a living in the publishing business. It might work for those writers wanting to establish a presence and perhaps grow an audience for their writing.
I don’t think it’s inevitable, either, regardless of lobbying. Reasonable pricing will be the norm, to provide some incentive to the creators, whether it’s a book, song, etc. IMO, after the initial flutter to hook the readers, pricing will stabilize. What about associations that would give preferential pricing to members, but still allow the writers to make a living? Some of the things offered for free are not of the same quality as what you pay for – and I prefer to pay a bit more to get a better product. This expectation of getting something for free is one of those generational issues again.
Nathan Bransford says
RW-
I actually take the opposite reaction from the music industry, which is that music lends itself well to ancillaries because people like going to concerts and will pay for them. Who is paying to see a non-superstar author?
Anonymous says
I don’t know how much I’d pay for an ebook. God knows I pay cover price for enough books that are $25-50. Would I pay that much for an ebook? I don’t know, and I dread the day I find out. I really (really) hate ebooks. I hate reading a lot of text on a computer, and the book-as-object is important to me, too. But I know that I don’t like the idea of writers having to give away their work for free and being expected to make a living on other things like blogs. What if I don’t want to spend my time operating a blog? What if–and I know this sounds crazy–I want to spend my time writing books that people will buy and read?
I do think that telling writers they’ll be expected to just give away their works for free is going to have a chilling effect on people who put a significant amount of time and effort into their craft. At the very least, it rather abuses writers. I hate the idea people have that just because something is in digital form, it’s free because you can make an infinite number of copies. It is very dispiriting.
Dara says
I certainly hope free isn’t inevitable.
I also agree with Vancouver Dame–many things “free” are often of inferior quality. If eBooks all became free, the level of craftsmanship will certainly go down the drain as anyone will be able to publish their “book.” (Self-publishing gone wrong in my opinion). Cheap doesn’t necessarily mean quality and I like quality. Then again, perhaps I just don’t like change at all.
I suppose I’m a dinosaur–and at 24 too…
djeaux says
“Who is paying to see a non-superstar author?”
Good point, Nathan. Non-superstar bands make their money playing bar gigs (and some down here on the Chitlin’ Circuit make pretty good careers out of it). Somehow I don’t see a lot of authors reading to rooms full of drunken college students … other than the ones who are professors, of course.
BTW, my first comment on your blog. It is a good one, and I check it about once a week. Thanks for what you do, sir!
Vinny says
Art has never been free. Its been paid for by sponsors, (kings, nobles etc.) Advertising has been the key to much of what we’ve come to expect as free, mostly TV shows and local newspapers. Community budgets and grants take care of the rest, concerts in the parks and such. So we’re stuck in this spiral of enjoying for free things which are not free. It’s no wonder some get bent out of shape when they have to pay something, however small, for content that they think should be free. Watching the web develop has been interesting all those years of experts saying that people will not pay for content have been proven wrong. The challenge now is to come up with what is fair and equitable.
Miss M says
Do you remember the demise of the music industry because of Napster? Remember how groups like Metallica sued Napster and several universities over free downloads? They didn’t go bankrupt because of Napster now did they? And the music industry had to re-think it’s revenue streams and work with iTunes.
What does this mean for publishing? If I had a crystal ball I’d stop writing this and get to work, but I don’t. So going with what I know: I still like taking a book with me to bed, to the beach or on a trip. It’s easy to hold, to pack, it’s comforting.
I know I can go to a bit torrent service on the web and download (for free) movies currently in theaters–with Cyrillic credits–but it is free.
Would I pay to have the movie streamed into my home? In a heartbeat. But the movie industry isn’t ready for that. Neither is the publishing industry completely ready for something along those lines as well. When they are, the model will reveal itself. The Hulu idea above is good.
Vegas Linda Lou says
I don’t think free is inevitable. However, free content can certainly generate enough interest so that readers will pay to hear more. For example, I know that women who read my blog are willing to pay to read my book; I can tell by the comments they leave.
Jeez, Nathan, if you’re a dinosaur at 28, then damn–I must be Eve! And maybe because I’m so freakin’ old (51), when I envision my readers enjoying my creation snuggled on the couch, lying on the beach, or even sitting on the john–what they have in their hands is a real live book. With pages!
Raethe says
Hey Nathan,
A question for you if I may. You mentioned that the cost of producing an e-book is not that much lower than the cost of producing a paper book, factoring in editing, typsetting, covers, and all the rest of that fun stuff. What I don’t understand is – unless maybe they’re e-book exclusives, wouldn’t that work have been done already for the print copies? Obviously there’d be some work involved in the conversion process (which, admittedly, I know absolutely nothing about) but wouldn’t the amount of work needed still be significantly reduced?
As for free… Well, first of all, I hate DRM with a passion, both as a consumer as an artist (shh, I mean a mindset in this case, not a profession. I promise I’m not trying to be pretentious!) As a consumer it’s, well, yes, annoying, and can severely limit the things you can do with something that you’ve paid money for. As an artist it means that fewer people are getting access to your stuff: People like Cory Doctorow and Jonathan Coulton (okay, he’s a musician, but he’s doing the exact same thing Doctorow is)have both discovered that getting their stuff out there, even when it’s free, is hugely beneficial to them. It gets more people reading or listening to their work and ultimately more people paying for it.
There’s also current attitudes towards DRM to be considered. A lot of people simply won’t buy something if it has DRM on it. End of story.
I’m a little bit on the fence with this one – just a little bit, mind. I’m not entirely comfortable with the concept of a world where people can just copy and share one’s work with impunity either… But I do think it’s inevitable. DRM doesn’t prevent someone who really wants it from getting at your work and, however annoying and invasive they make it, it probably never will. And yes, I do think it has or can have negative impacts on one’s audience. So it’s not an entirely comfortable answer, but for me at least it’s pretty clear.
Also, I don’t remember where exactly I read this so maybe it’s not accurate, but I heard somewhere that DRM encryption is one of the major costs in creating e-books. Something to be considered, maybe?
Dearth of Reason says
I wonder if a similar debate occurred prior to the establishment of community libraries. I have been a bit scornful of the music industry’s woes since every book people might request ends up free on a shelf shortly after it is mass-produced.
I will buy books that are meaningful to me. I will pay to see movies. I will buy albums that reach me in ways only music can. I don’t see that ever changing. Perhaps what we end up with is a thinner marketplace of content in high demand, augmented by a mosh pit of free content, as artists jostle for a place on the top. The first Harry Potter book is free, but you pay a premium for the heavily guarded, narrow channel sequels.
Marilyn Peake says
Recently, I saw a TV show about the lives of musicians in famous rock bands today. One of the musicians commented that music has changed so much, they now have to spend about 200 days on the road every year in order to survive. It was tough for those with children. One of the musicians commented that he had never been home for any of his seven-year-old child’s birthdays.
Nathan Bransford says
Raethe-
Yeah, I think up until now publishers have considered e-books kind of like icing because a lot of the costs involved in producing an e-book (production, overhead, etc.) have already been paid for. But now that a primarily e-book world seems to be on the horizon, they really need to be considering how they’re acclimating consumers. Suddenly the e-book is the edition that’s supposed to support the overhead, and then you’re in a bind.
Conversion costs to DRM-friendly formats are relatively miniscule in the big picture.
Re: free and the music business and all the rest. I think people were a little caught up in the wonders of the Internet and there was a lot of justification going on. I hope the Internet culture has grown up a little and people realize that there are costs involved in producing art, and artists deserve to be rewarded. The music industry is a shell of its former self. And people think they were wrong to try and fight Napster?
Nathan Bransford says
Dearth of Reason-
Re: libraries, surely there’s a difference between sharing a copy of a book one at a time vs. conceivably sharing one book instantaneously with a 1,000 people?
Anonymous says
Raethe said, “As a consumer it’s, well, yes, annoying, and can severely limit the things you can do with something that you’ve paid money for.”
There are lots of limits to what you can do with your property. If you buy a DVD, you aren’t allowed to sell tickets and screen the DVD in your home theater. If you buy a car, you can’t drive in the wrong lane. If you buy a song on iTunes for 99 cents and are only allowed to have it on your iPod or in iTunes, I don’t see that you’re being ripped off so much as having a misplaced sense of entitlement.
Books are not outrageously expensive. No, they are not. eBooks should not be outrageously cheap. You should pay people for their work, for the infrastructure that makes the object you purchase possible, and that’s more than the cost of materials.
mary beth says
“Who is paying to see a superstar author?”
Right. And also a concert is a communal experience, part of the fun is singing and dancing with hundreds or thousands of other people who love the same music you do. Reading is a solitary pleasure; it’s you and the book.
And writing a book is hard and time consuming (not that writing music or creating an album is fast or easy) it’s hard to imagine doing all that work for free. Money conveys value; if something seems too cheap people don’t want to buy it. If book content is completely free the perception of its value might go down. There are certainly valuable things that are free but money isn’t meaningless.
Thanks for (as always) sparking an interesting (and free) discussion. Hmmm.
Carradee says
I’ve recently encountered some authors with free short stories and/or novelettes on their sites. (Like Kelley Armstrong.) Mercedes Lackey is even offering a story by her for free on podcast. I’m sure it has its place as advertisement–I’m considering doing something similar, myself–but that should be the author’s decision.
I doubt e-books will ever be universally free. Software can still cost quite a bit despite all the freeware bouncing around the Internet. I don’t like DRM, but I wouldn’t mind limits being set in e-book files for the number of copies that can be made from it.
But what about shareware? I bet e-books could be created to allow x days free, then you have to buy it to keep being able to use it. That could hinder the send-to-all-my-friends syndrome, and a good design could probably even keep someone from downloading the sample multiple times in a row.
I could even see authors and publishers creating services like Imeem or Hulu, which let people stream music and TV shows/movies that the owner allows. (Otherwise, Imeem limits it to a 30 second playback, unless you’ve loaded the song to your account yourself, proving that you own it.) But if you want to download it to your computer and not just have access to it online, you have to pay.
Seems to me like there are options out there.
Dearth of Reason says
Nathan, yes, a big difference, especially when timing and buzz are so critical. I only meant to say that the idea of free, in-demand art is not new. I like bitching about libraries. I (mildly) disapprove of libraries lending out living copyrighted content, as I (heartily) disapprove of Napster. I just don’t know how to fight them. So I (unhappily) foresee a different marketplace for books in the future.
Raethe says
Thanks Nathan! That makes more sense.
Anonymous 11:44 –
I think that your examples are a little different though. If you buy a DVD and then screen it in your home, then you’re making commercial use off a product that you have no lisence to.
If I were to buy a song off iTunes, though, I’d be buying it for personal use, and I don’t see why personal use shouldn’t include being able to play it in an application that doesn’t annoy me (I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t given iTunes anything close to a fair shake, but I don’t like it), or pop it on a CD and put it in my car, or upload it to my old mp3 player because I can’t afford an iPod, particularly when said mp3 player works just fine. I mean, why would I buy something if I couldn’t listen to it the way I wanted to? That doesn’t make sense.
So far as I’m concerned, the problem is not that I can take a song and burn it to a CD, upload it to an mp3 player, play it in Winamp, or whatever. The problem is that the same technology that allows me to do so for personal use allows me to do the same for ten of my friends. THAT’s a little more like the DVD screening example that you mentioned earlier, I think.
The problem is that we have no way to allow one without allowing the other.
Lady Glamis says
I certainly hope free is not the future! You have made a good point in your comments above that the music industry is different from the writing industry. I’m afraid others see them as the same, and that words should be as free as music can be. But you are right, nobody gathers in flocks and pays huge ticket prices to see an author. And nobody is sponsoring authors and radio stations to read their books on the air.
write_HB says
As a children’s writer, I cringe at the thought of a google-type revenue stream.
Jake rumaged in the kitchen for something to eat.
*** Enjoy Pizza Pockets for a fast filling lunch!***
Then he hopped on his bike,
***Buy Swin, you’ll get there faster!***
and rode downtown to the toy store.
***Toys R Us, for everything a kid needs.***
reader says
So according to RW I’ve got to try to make a living “speaking” as s writer instead of writing books?
Oy. No thanks.
I say “no” to free books, free chapters, and free everything. Most people don’t respect things they don’t pay for anyway. Do people go see movies for free, to try out a new actor so they can mabye see another movie of his a year later? No. Do they get free shoes from Nike, to see if they like them so they can maybe buy a pair next year? No.
Susan Helene Gottfried says
Three hours ago, I’d have said that yes, free is inevitable. Three hours ago, I hadn’t had a long talk with my financial planner, either, and heard his view of the future.
Still, I think free-to-some degree is inevitable, but people will be willing to part with their money for something worthwhile. The question in front of us, then, is how to define worthwhile — and that is one of those sticky subjective things.
Conni says
(sorry for the delete; the html didn’t work.)
I dislike DRM for the reasons depicted in this XKCD strip: https://xkcd.com/488/ For the link-phobic, a file with DRM will be completely non-interoperable with a new player, should the old one die out or the technology be superseded. The DRM is proprietary — which means Sony’s isn’t the same as Amazon’s isn’t the same as FictionWise’s.
So, for example, say iTunes changes from its current state to something different, hiTunes, and won’t read your old mp3s — the ones you bought from the iTunes store. If you want to listen to them, you’ll have to BUY ANOTHER copy.
I don’t know about y’all, but I would rather be able to read my (e)books as many times as I want, regardless of platform interoperability or proprietary software encoding.
Mary says
Free is not inevitable.
I think flexibility is important and see an increasing need for writers and artists to add strings to their bow. But. The idea of giving content away and building revenue purely through ancillary streams goes too far. And, though it can work for a few, I don’t think this model can succeed across the board.
In publishing, the book (be it paper, e-book, or streamed to the brain) is the product. In fashion, clothing is the product. Publishing companies and fashion companies both incur overhead costs to develop the product, and manufacturing, distribution, and marketing costs to produce the product and position it in the market. Would a fashion company consider giving away clothes and building revenue solely through their websites, the sale of trend information, styling services, customer events, etc.? Hmmm… I don’t think so.
To give away a company’s reason for being is too topsy-turvy. It undermines the product. And if the maker does not value it, who will?
Also, I believe the idea that advertising will raise enough money is wrong. Television companies are losing advertisers and economies are shrinking. A slot in a book that had not sold big numbers could be a very hard sell.
Ink says
I have a six-day-a-week job and a young family, and I try to fit my writing into that schedule because it is what I love. And now I’m supposed to have three new jobs on top of that, developing ancillary revenue streams? I just don’t see it. How does that help writers create great writing? And how does that help readers find great reading?
And I see the Doctorows of the world doing well because they stand out. When everything costs money and one or two things pop up free, then people say hey, what’s that? And maybe they try it out, and they become a fan and purchase future books or pay into those “ancillary revenue streams”. But that advantage completely disappears when everything everywhere is free. Every writer will have that same advantage… and it will quickly become a disadvantage once everything is lost in a sea of free.
It will be an endless brew of self-aggrandizement as everyone tries to separate themselves from the muck. What will you have to do to stand out then? And simply working on your craft and writing something great won’t be enough. And how many people will simply stop trying when they realize their art doesn’t matter? When art becomes a subsidiary to self-promotion?
Sounds a little ugly to me, but maybe I’m wrong. And if it comes about this way I hope I am.
My best, as always,
Bryan Russell
Tom Burchfield says
The Freevangelism movement smacks a little of Darwinism to me. Is it true that if I’m not willing to be on the road two hundred days a year promoting my book and multiples of hours building a gigantic Web site visited by billions, then I deserve to fail?(In the meantime, where do I find the time to write my next book, eh? Does the book itself become secondary? Twain and Dickens may have made all their money from “ancillary streams” but it’s not their latest appearances at Herbst Theater that makes me read their books.)
These Theories of Absolute Freedom so often wind up boiling down to the Freedom of the Biggest, Strongest Beast in the Room.
Anonymous says
“I don’t know about y’all, but I would rather be able to read my (e)books as many times as I want, regardless of platform interoperability or proprietary software encoding.”
Yes, and I would like to play my cassettes in my CD player. But I can’t. And that’s just life.
Miss M says
Is the music industry a shell of its former self or leaner with artists more in control of their product? Aimee Mann has been selling her music herself via the web for a while now.
If it is a shell of its former self it’s only because they refused to see what was in front of them and embrace the technology sooner. They weren’t caught off-guard, it was looming for a while. If I saw it coming…
Where they right to fight Napster? Yes.
I would like to add though that listening to songs for free (my five minutes on Napster before it was shut down) only made me go out and buy CDs I had sampled on the site. I imagine a lot of other people did the same–it whetted the appetite so to speak. Seriously, I had not purchased anything in a long time until I went on to Napster, all those long 8 years ago.
Ulysses says
Forgive me. This is overlong.
It’s free though, so that has to mean something…
Is free inevitable? No, although apparently Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation disagree with me.
I got very little out of my time as an employee of Radio Shack, but I will always remember this bit of wisdom from the training manual: “Consumers will buy where they perceive value.” It’s a piece of common sense observation that had somehow escaped me before. Readers will buy books so long as they perceive value. They will pay a price commensurate with the amount of entertainment and pleasure they derive from their purchase.
So the question becomes one of perception: do readers believe they get the same quality reading experience for free that they do for a price? I’ve read a fair bit from the web, and a fair bit from the bookstore and come to my own conclusions.
The stuff offered for free on the web falls into three categories: free stuff made available for the gratification of the author (like personal blogs), free stuff produced as a marketing tool (like professional blogs and “samples”) and free stuff accompanied by advertising (and yes, I know there’s a lot of cross-pollination). The stuff produced for personal gratification is usually* not of sufficient value to me that I would pay for it. The stuff produced as a marketing tool is not usually* something I would pay for, ALTHOUGH I would consider paying for the product that is being marketed (I wouldn’t pay to read Nathan’s blog, but I’d pay for his services as an agent, for example). And I’m already paying (via my attention to advertising) for content on ad-supported sites. If they wanted me to pay more directly, well, I’d usually* pass.
Usually*, the entertainment value I get from a purchased book is considerably greater than the value I get from the free sources. I suspect that speaks to “quality” (insert your own definition of that here), but it might just speak to habit. In any event: I perceive more value in my purchased books than in the material offered for free. As long as that distinction remains, I don’t see free becoming inevitable.
* Yes, there are exceptions.
What about e-books and DRM?
The advantages of e-books are obvious, and made moreso by the availability of wonderful devices that take away the pain of reading from a computer monitor. I’d personally have no problem paying for an e-book if I had a reader for it. The drawback is that (as Stallman puts it), information wants to be free and e-books lower the amount of effort required to achieve that. It’s impractical to make copies of a paper book, but copying an e-book requires knowledge of only a few computer tricks. I perceive no value worth paying for when I don’t have to pay at all.
Thus we have DRM.
As of this writing, I hate DRM. No one has come up with a DRM scheme which is both painless for the legitimate purchaser of the content and unbreakable by those who wish to obtain it illegitimately. When that changes, I shall embrace DRM with a passion unrivalled.
Nathan Bransford says
conni-
I guess I’m not quite as sympathetic to the “what if the multinationals go bankrupt and we can’t play our DRM e-books” argument when people have readily changed out their records for their cassettes for their CDs for their mp3s and didn’t complain about having to buy new copies each time.
If you want permanence, sure, buy a paper book. But why are e-books suddenly the End of the Line for format changes?
Anonymous says
Perhaps I’m not addressing the specific question at hand, but I don’t quite understand this desire to access books for free. When I buy a book (or a CD, for that matter), my payment is an acknowledgment to the artist et al. that they worked for a very long time–maybe even years–on the creation of this product. Why shouldn’t I pay them for that? Moreover, why shouldn’t I expect payment for myself, once I’ve committed myself to years of sweat, tears, joy, pain and rage in order to polish my own book?
Christopher M. Park says
Wow, this is a huge topic. I think there are already a lot of industries that have been going through this for a while — music and video games most notably. I think that the video games market has shown that heavy-handed DRM is not welcomed. In other words, most consumers don’t mind DRM as long as it is easy to use, and doesn’t change their experience overly much. There are some digital distribution platforms such as Steam or Greenhouse that require you to authenticate before download (and in the case of Steam, before each run of a game / or alternatively something every 30 days if you can’t connect on each run). This has been very effective at curtailing piracy of games released on this platform, and it has been almost universally embraced.
By contrast you have other crazy DRM schemes that do things like replace your CD device drivers with locked-down ones (without your permission), which prevent large numbers of actual customers from getting at the product they bought (thus causing legitimate customers to have to resort to “cracks” — which are available almost immediately, I might add).
As a programmer, it’s my belief that with the present state of consumer hardware, no DRM will ever work unless it is based on authentication to a closed system (a central service somewhere). Any other model will be hacked, faster than you think, because there are some very talented (and amoral?) people out there who love the challenge.
People dance all around this issue, but there has only been one model that has really worked well so far. I don’t use iTunes, but I do believe that its method of distribution is similar to Steam — correct me if I’m wrong. DRM is here to stay, but it should become practically invisible to regular consumers if implemented properly (especially in this day and age of near-ubiquitous Internet access).
As for the idea of having the price of books be set based on demand, that makes me pretty wary. People tend to have all sorts of associations with the price of products — if something is too cheap, they assume it has no value. This is a subconscious heuristic, from what I remember of lectures on this subject. Having pricing like this would only serve to make people buy LESS of the unknown authors unless there was some sort of review system or an incredible amount of word of mouth surrounding the book.
Plus, how would that affect backlist sales — older books that should sell for what they are worth, but to a diminished audience, might find themselves vastly underpriced under this model. Another side of this: just because something has a niche audience doesn’t mean it is less valuable. This might discourage writers from even approaching topics that are deemed “too niche,” because there’d be no way to even recoup the time costs of writing (not to mention the fact that this would probably downgrade the quality of the editing and the cover design, since the return would be even smaller than now).
At present, I don’t see why there would be any incentive to sell some books at a massive loss and others at a massive profit. Seems like this would just skew the marketplace in a lot of bad ways.
But, eBooks are definitely coming. I really like the way, in general, that fictionwise handles eBooks for mobile devices. Seems like pretty smart, effective DRM and reasonable prices on reasonably recent books.
Michael Pickett says
The problem that we will face if we start giving away everything for free is that quality of what we get will go down. If a writer has no incentive to make his story better than everyone else’s, an incentive like money, he won’t put in the effort to make his story better than anyone else’s. I’m a writer, and I know what you have to be motivated by more than money to write well. But I’m also a human being with rent to pay, food to buy, and bills to take care of. If I didn’t have the belief that my writing would one day provide me with some form of monetary compensation, I would have to drastically reduce the time I spend on it, and I wouldn’t try as hard to get it just right. People only work if they have an incentive to do so, and writing is work. In fact, it’s the work that goes into the writing that people are paying for when they buy a book, not the paper it’s printed on.
Raethe says
Nathan: as for the format changes thing, I’d say it’s because you’re physically not going to get a cassette tape to play on a CD player. A digital file isn’t hindered by the same physical requirements.
Okay, really. This discussion is FAR too interesting.
Carradee says
“people have readily changed out their records for their cassettes for their CDs for their mp3s and didn’t complain about having to buy new copies each time.”
Um… they have? There are tape-to-CD converters, and CDs convert to mp3 fine.
And that’s a good point about people paying where value is perceived. I’ve always wondered why people pay so much for name brands where generics work the same or better.
I use an Apple computer, and other than the software that came with it, the only thing I’ve paid for is MS Office for Mac, and I bought it because I didn’t know about freeware at the time and needed doc format for my freelance writing job. Otherwise, I use freeware. So I’m well-entrenched in the use-stuff-that’s-free mentality.
BUT I recently found this Mac-only software for writers that I absolutely LOVE. I’m using the 30-day free trial, and I’m already wincing towards the day when I’ll be paying $40 to use it indefinitely. And I will. Because I like the software THAT much.
But, for it to win out over my preference for freeware, it had to be THAT good (for me).
So might not the movement towards free e-books actually do some good by decreasing what people pay for that’s dross?
Mira says
This is a really interesting discussion to read.
Like math and physics, I’m not good at the details of business. So I can’t really offer an opinion about the near future. Although, I do think that Nathan’s argument sounds right to me.
One thing I will say is that people will eventually find a way to make money. Everything is in flux. So, if the music industry is suffering from free content, I predict that will eventually change.
Some people have a real gift at making money. They’ll come up with something. I have faith in them.
Anonymous says
“Nathan: as for the format changes thing, I’d say it’s because you’re physically not going to get a cassette tape to play on a CD player. A digital file isn’t hindered by the same physical requirements.”
It’s still a change or difference in technology. A digital file is a *thing* with real attributes, and digital files are not interchangeable. My PDF files aren’t editable with MS Word, and I can’t play mp3s in PhotoShop, though they are all digital files. Nobody’s ripping me off by this, either, and I don’t have any innate right to infinitely usable digital files. We get what we pay for, and what we pay for is information in a specific form created by a specific technology.
Stuff wears out and/or becomes obselete. What’s the big deal?
Anonymous says
I think that the advertisement-heavy “free” copies and advertisement-free paid copies of the documents could be the most likely future prospect.
’cause the human nature is good to the point of sharing things that are not available to everybody – this is the Robin Hood in each of us – but if we pay for a slightly better version of something we won’t share it with others who can have the same stuff, but with advertisements.
Laura D says
Giving away free material to form a fanbase will inevitably (as long as it’s good) turn into people wanting to buy your new stuff.
A friend of mine kept a Bare Naked Ladies tape sealed when they gave it to him at a free concert because he knew they’d be successful and still went out and bought their first album which had the same songs on it!
ryan field says
“people have readily changed out their records for their cassettes for their CDs for their mp3s and didn’t complain about having to buy new copies each time.”
I did this, and didn’t complain. I didn’t see see a choice.
Sarah Jensen says
The saying “You get what you pay for”, keeps coming to mind.
Unless we’re going back to the bartering system, which I’m fine with, 🙂 I think that buying books, whether in paper of digital, is the way to go.
just my 2 cents.
Scott says
Here’s my deal on DRM, book sharing, etc. – once I buy a book, cd, magazine, newspaper, don’t I have the right to share said items with whoever (whomever??) I want? A friend and I are constantly trading books back and forth. In fact, I have a stack of unread books from him on my bookshelf right now. Am I robbing the publisher/author of money by trading books with my friend? What about the fact that I gave away the majority of my CDs because I no longer listen to them? What about the magazines I bring in to work to share with co-workers? Should the magazine publisher charge a “sharing” fee?
Now, I’m not saying pirate music, books, etc. is accepatble. I think it is very wrong on every possible level. I just think that once a person purchases a book/cd/whatever, that the basic right of what to do with that book/cd/whatever is up to the person.
Lastly – do libraries pay publishers an exorbinant fee for their books? Is there some fee schedule libraries must pay based on how many times somebody checks out a book?
RW says
“Who will pay to see a non-superstar author?”
Probably nobody. I didn’t mean to suggest that would anything other than a million-to-one shot for the literary world. I only mean that there’s a lesson in the music industry to learn from. While the industry that sells CDs is screaming that we’re at the end of the world, more musicians than ever are finding a way to create their work and make a living at it. The “music industry” is not the same thing as “music.” It’s not even the music industry–it usually just means the major label distributors of CDs. The changes we’ve going through have been painful for the people involved in that industry, but it’s been great for music itself, great for fans and–I really think–great for all the bands at the end of the long tail.
Apple saw that crisis and saw an opportunity. They’re getting rich, and the last three things I downloaded and paid for on I-tunes were by friends who recorded material on their own without the benefit of major-label relationships. Just this afternoon I chose not to download Dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog after hearing it on Fresh Air–which was created without the benefit of a major studio–because I could watch it ad-supported online.
The lesson to take from the music industry is to remember that just because the book industry is going to hell it doesn’t mean that books are. Creative thinking about alternative revenue streams is starting to churn up new models, including some strategies already noted on here by other readers.
Nathan Bransford says
Scott-
I understand that most DRM is a rollback from the days when you could give away a book freely to a friend. But that was one copy at a time. In the digital era, how many people should someone be able to share a file with? One? Five? A thousand? A million? Where do you draw the line?
Nathan Bransford says
RW-
Sure, if the publishing industry has to go for the future, who am I to question the future? There’s a line from Ken Kalfus’ COMMISSARIAT OF ENLIGHTENMENT, something along the lines of “Get out of the way, b***, or history will mow you down.”
But is a free era really best for authors? Sure, the barriers of distribution may come down, but if only a handful of people are able to make any kind of money through ancillary means, how are the rest going to devote the kind of time it takes to create a good novel?
I think there are two things happening simultaneously in the music business, and in this hypothetical publishing world we’re imagining. Distribution barriers are coming down (good). Downward pressure on prices and rampant piracy (bad). Just because both are a product of the digital era doesn’t make it all good.
CindaChima says
As if it’s not hard enough to make a living as an author! I don’t think we should assume that the best writers are also the best pitch-people, public speakers, and stage entertainers. And if I am great at making my living that way, then why sit in front of my computer screen all day? Let’s lose those long hours of writing and editing.
There’s plenty of great content available for free on the Web now–if you want to spend the time finding it. I would like to see us make it socially and politically incorrect to steal people’s work. I feel the same way about stealing music as I do about stealing books.
If it’s ALL free, then the notion of giving away your work so you can sell your new stuff doesn’t make sense. People can read first chapters on my website for free…