free as in . . .
Tim Lee, blogging at Megan’s place, comments on my recent post:
I find Alan's post a little bit ironic because I'm pretty sure that (unless Reihan is playing favorites among American Scene bloggers) he didn't get paid to write his post. His post was titled "MY WRITING DOESN'T WANT TO BE FREE," but I was still able to read it without paying for the privilege. Something doesn't compute there.
Well . . . I also wrote a number of emails today that I didn’t get paid for. Is that also ironic? If not, why not?
But more centrally, in response to the main question of my post — How is a full-time freelance writer like Steven Poole supposed to make a living if he gives his writing away? — Tim replies by talking about content being given away by programmers and writers who work for organizations that pay them. Well, sure. That happens all the time. But that’s not the scenario Poole and I are talking about.
Tim concludes by saying that David Pogue's “lack of creativity isn't evidence that no one else will figure something out. And it certainly doesn't prove that ‘free’-based business models in general are doomed to failure.” But neither Pogue nor Poole nor I said anything about “‘free’-based business models in general”; we were all talking about the specific case of freelance writers. And the reference to “Pogue’s lack of creativity” begs the very point that’s at issue here: if Pogue hasn’t figured out a way to make money from his writing while giving it away, maybe that indicates a lack of creativity. Then again, maybe it indicates something else: that a business model that works in some situations doesn’t work in all of them. Time will tell, I guess. Meanwhile, my question is still on the table and still not getting much of a response.
I still think there’s a disconnect here. It’s true that some people make a normative argument that information should be free, and it makes sense for you to challenge those people to explain how you can do that and still make money.
But AFAICT Masnick and Lee are making a descriptive argument: the market for easily-reproducible digital content itself will continue to shrink, so information providers need a new business model for their own good. You can certainly disagree with that prediction itself, but complaining that they haven’t told you how to make money in that environment doesn’t respond to their argument at all. Maybe you can’t make money by giving your writing away — that doesn’t mean that their prediction is necessarily wrong.
— kenB · May 29, 02:46 PM · #
Yeah but kenB, again— Alan is asking someone to describe that business model, and no one can come up with one.
— Lifafa Das · May 29, 03:20 PM · #
Lifafa Das, my point is that if Masnick and Lee are correct in their prediction, the burden to come up with a business model is not on them but on Alan (and anyone else who wants to make a living as a writer). If I tell you your car is about to break down and you respond that you don’t know where to get an affordable replacement, why is it up to me to figure out what you should do? It’s your car and your problem.
— kenB · May 29, 03:31 PM · #
Alan, I’m confused. Which question of yours is not getting a response? If the question is how freelance writers can make a living without charging for their content, how is advertising not a viable model?
In in point of fact, Pogue and Poole were talking about “‘free’-based business models in general.” That’s why they used a question about e-books as a jumping-off point to bash “the Slashdot argument” and talk about how programmers and musicians don’t make money with free content. If your point is simply that it might not be possible to earn a living giving away books, well fine. That may be true. But I don’t think that has any broader implications since lots of people plainly do make a living from content that’s given away.
— Tim · May 29, 04:14 PM · #
Books are not going to go away for a very long time. MP3 files are more convenient than CDs, which is why they are replacing them. But digital books are less convenient than paper books and will be for a long time (with the exception of some reference books – encyclopedias are probably dead and I don’t know how the OED will be financed once it becomes trivial to swap electronic copies of it, but the Audubon Society will be selling paper copies of the Field Guide to North American Birds for a long time). You need electricity to listen to recorded music in any format. You can read a paper book in the bathtub by candlelight.
Digital books are advertisements for paper books. That’s your business model. Lots more people will read the ads than buy the books (and lots of people will just borrow the paper book from the library). Maybe some authors will decide they don’t “need” to advertise that way (whether they have any choice about it as reproduction technology improves is another matter). But for a lot of authors, digital reproduction will be how they build an audience that wants to buy their paper books.
And freelancers will also have work-for-hire. The New York Times has a button inviting you to e-mail free copies of its articles to anyone you wish, but they still pay their writers.
— Michael · May 29, 05:04 PM · #
Tim, you write, “In point of fact, Pogue and Poole were talking about ‘free’-based business models in general.” I don’t see where you get that. Over and over again they distinguish between the situation for writers and the situation of creators of other kind of content. For example, Poole: “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. Writing distributed over the internet is not the same as writing you buy in shops. Yet. There’s still all that business of the physicality of the book as object.” And Pogue: “Actually, authors like me are lucky; our work is, at this point, pretty much protected with unbreakable copy protection. That is, our bound and published books can’t be duplicated infinitely and distributed by the millions online.” Both of them place particular emphasis on the very point that you say they’re not making!
When you come down to it, is there anyone anywhere who says that give-it-away-for-free business models don’t work? I mean, we’ve all heard of broadcast television and radio, haven’t we? So, once more with feeling: Poole, Pogue, and I are trying to figure out what the implications are for writers and writing if the give-it-away model becomes universal, as some people are predicting it will. So when you say that even if that model doesn’t work for writing “I don’t think that has any broader implications,” I say that I don’t give a rip about broader implications because I’m interested in the future of writing, especially long-form writing, as in books. In my view, that kind of writing is important enough and valuable enough that if it becomes impossible for people to make a living doing it I’ll be really unhappy. And if Jonathan Coulter and people who write for Gawker sites are doing okay, that won’t give me a whole lot of consolation.
Again, I’m writing all this in light of the possibility — and it’s only a possibility, and in my view a relatively unlikely one — that the Masnicks of the world are right and “free” will ultimately be the only option for content distribution. (So kenB, I do understand that prediction is not the same as celebration.) If they are right, then those who practice long-form writing — at least, those who are not independently wealthy and are not attached to the academy (which poses its own problems for writers) — will either have to come up with a business model that supports that kind of writing, or that kind of writing will be seriously endangered. It’s pretty damned hard to write Gravity’s Rainbow when you can only steal a few hours on evenings and weekends. I think we’re all agreed about that, at least.
But what if there is no such model? I’m not saying that no one will come up with one, but I am saying that no one has yet, and that it might not happen. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s not just my problem, as kenB would have it. I think the independent freelance writer, of fiction and non-fiction alike, who thinks seriously and writes boldly is an important figure in the public sphere, and if new economic realities make it harder for such people to survive, that will be a loss for everyone. Perhaps it will be a loss we can recover from, or adapt to, but it will be a significant deficit all the same.
— Alan Jacobs · May 29, 05:57 PM · #
Michael, you write: “Digital books are advertisements for paper books. That’s your business model.” I’m trying to think of an analogy to this: is there any other product which we give away (in full, not a sample or excerpt) in one form in order to entice people to buy exactly the same product in another form? Can anybody think of one?
— Alan Jacobs · May 29, 06:18 PM · #
The closest analogy would be DVD sales of broadcast television shows. (I saw a collection of Rachel Ray cooking shows at Target the other day — the only place left to go is DVD collections of game shows like Deal or No Deal.)
True, in that model, the producing network collects revenue on the front end with advertising and on the back end with DVDs, but it’s close to the example you are requesting.
— J Mann · May 29, 06:43 PM · #
Alan,
I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree about Poole’s original point. It seems to me this was the key passage:
<blockquote>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?</blockquote>
I took Poole to be analogizing the plight of the book author to the plight of the programmer, and arguing that <i>because</i> programmers don’t give away their code, <i>therefore</i>, it’s unreasonable to ask writers to give away their writings. But of course programmers do often give away their code, and seem to be able to make a living at it anyway. So, too, do freelance writers make a profit by giving away articles, blog posts, etc and selling associated ads. it sure
If Poole and Pogue’s point is that they can’t think of a strategy for making a living by giving away long-form writing, well, then that’s fine. Maybe I can’t either. But if that’s their point, I don’t really understand why they brought up all these other markets—including short-form freelancing and programmer—where people and companies do make a profit giving information away for free.
— Tim · May 29, 07:00 PM · #
Alan, I can read every book you’ve written in its entirety for free by checking it out from the library. Why have I bought some of them? 1. The convenience of having it on the shelf whenever I want it; 2. To have a physical object to wrap and give as a gift. Those same two reasons would exist if you made your books available for free as html files on your website.
— Michael · May 29, 07:32 PM · #
J: Yes, that’s relatively close, but the differences between the broadcast version (available only at a particular time, available only with commercial breaks, etc.) and the DVD version (which will typically contain added material) are still pretty significant.
Tim: Agree to disagree? Never! It’s against my religion. Here’s an interesting exercise: look at the Poole and Pogue posts, and see how many paragraphs a) deal only with writing, b) deal with other content in order to contrast them to writing, and c) positively compare writing with other forms of content. You may have identified the only member of class c, and perhaps it is the key statement, but if so, Poole and Pogue have wasted a lot of words on non-key matters.
Michael: if you have online or downloadable versions of my books you also have them whenever you want them, though on your computer rather than on your shelf. For some people that would be a strong disincentive to purchase. I am also not sure whether other people buy books for the same reasons you do. Who knows, maybe if I tried to do for my next book what 37signals did for their I would make piles of money. But as long as publishers continue to show interest in paying me for my writing I’m probably not going to find out.
— Alan Jacobs · May 29, 08:18 PM · #
I think the strong form of the slashdot argument — that all information based products will eventually be free due to competition from other free substitutes — is pretty clearly not going to come true in the foreseeable future. (Of course, due to the pace of technological innovation, I think the foreseeable future is limited to the next 5-15 years).
On the other hand, if we are brainstorming for ideas of how freelance writers can use some of the free insights to their benefit, maybe we can work from a weaker form — that because of the radical drop in the cost of copying and distribution, there are a bunch of currently unrealized opportunities to make money by offering more low-cost and free content.
Here are a couple ideas:
1) Partially free. As I said in the last thread, I actually bought Shaming the Devil directly because I was able to read one of the essays for free and immediately on the internet. I bought some space opera potboiler because the hardcover came with the last dozen books in the series on CD-rom. Posting some free content to sell the rest seems like a good idea. (Similarly, I read Starbucked specifically because of the excerpt in the NY Times, which I read for free on the net, but I read a library copy, so it didn’t result in much actual revenue).
2) Shareware: Museums make a lot more money with “Suggested donation:$10” than with “Pay what you can.” Shareware software authors make some money too, on the theory that people who want to obey copyright are willing to pay a reasonable fee to do so. Distribute your e-books with a watermark that can’t be removed unless the reader buys a registered copy, or just require the reader to click a button that says “I paid” or “Not yet” every time she opens the e-book. You’ll make more money than Poole, but probably not a ton, at least not without some more refinement of the idea.
— J Mann · May 29, 09:36 PM · #
For some people that would be a strong disincentive to purchase.
Yes. My point is that for lots more people, libraries are a strong disincentive to purchase your book, and yet your business model survives. Do you think you’d be selling a whole lot more books if it weren’t for those darned libraries?
And think about this. Let’s say we eliminate libraries completely. Now everyone who wants to read your book has to buy it. Would you consider yourself richer or poorer if that were to happen? Would a world in which most books are freely available over the internet actually be a net loss to you personally?
— Michael · May 30, 06:12 PM · #
I like libraries, Michael. Use them myself from time to time. I’m also in favor of decriminalizing the lending of books in general, so that if you buy a book of mine and lend it to a friend of yours, I don’t think you should have to go to jail.
That said, isn’t there just a smidgen of difference between borrowing something for a time and owning it forever?
If I wanted to play the literary one-armed bandit I could try making digital versions of my books available for free, and maybe it would work better for me than the current system. But as I said before, as long as publishers (and then readers) buy my books, I’ll keep taking the money. Such as it is.
— Alan Jacobs · May 30, 07:56 PM · #
How long does your publisher own your copyright? If you get to negotiate copyright renewals after a certain period or a certain number of years without a new publishing, you might try some tech experiments then.
Ultimately, though, since business methods also want to be free, you might just wait until you see some similarly situated writer develop a successful model, then do that.
— J Mann · May 30, 08:50 PM · #
J Mann, you can negotiate with publishers about these matters — they will often be happy to revert the rights to you when they think they’ve made all they are likely to make from a book. One of first specifically scholarly examples of the kind of thing you’re talking about was James O’Donnells’s three-volume edition of Augustine’s Confessions, which came out in 1992 at a snappy $125 a volume. Obviously the sales from this were going to be overwhelmingly to libraries, so after all the libraries had their chance, O’Donnell bought the rights back from Oxford UP — for a buck! — and put the whole thing online. Because it’s text-plus-commentary, it works a lot better onscreen (in two panes) than in book form, so everyone’s a winner.
— Alan Jacobs · May 30, 10:01 PM · #
That said, isn’t there just a smidgen of difference between borrowing something for a time and owning it forever?
I guess you’re not buying my argument that owning a physical book is superior to a digital copy of the text in many of the same ways that it is superior to borrowing a copy from the library. And that if libraries haven’t killed book sales, neither will digital downloads. So I’ll stop repeating myself.
But I predict that our grandchildren will imagine a world in which you can’t read books freely over the internet with the same horror that we would imagine a world without libraries. And that they will also still be buying and owning and reading physical books, for which authors will receive royalties.
— Michael · May 31, 11:07 PM · #
I guess you’re not buying my argument that owning a physical book is superior to a digital copy of the text in many of the same ways that it is superior to borrowing a copy from the library.
Yeah, I’m not buying it. In one situation we have two different forms in which something can be owned; in the other we have the difference between borrowing and owning. Those are not analogous situations. I would not even agree that owning a physical copy of a book is necessarly better than owning a digital one: I own a number of books in digital form only that I would not be interested in owning paper copies of. What form I want the book in depends on the book. And as more people get used to reading lots of text on computer screens, more of them will be happy to read only (or mostly) in that venue. I’ve talked to many people who, like me, read much more on screens than they used to and don’t find it nearly as uncomfortable as they once did.
But I predict that our grandchildren will imagine a world in which you can’t read books freely over the internet with the same horror that we would imagine a world without libraries. And that they will also still be buying and owning and reading physical books, for which authors will receive royalties.
We’ll see — if we live long enough. Check back with me in forty years and if your prediction has come true, I’ll buy you dinner (though I may have to take mine through a feeding tube).
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 1, 07:30 PM · #
A feeding tube? You expect hospitals to still be around? Those are a pretty recent fad compared to books.
— Michael · Jun 3, 02:45 PM · #