Credit where credit is due: I was first informed of this
fascinating tale about the future of writing and book publishing from David
Pogue’s always fun, provocative and illuminating weekly
column in The New York Times. His
May 22nd column
provided his take on whether he should provide free downloads of his (many) books.
After a couple of bad experiences he’s now firmly against it, while admitting
that “I realize that it puts me, rather awkwardly, on the same side of the
piracy issue as the record companies and movie companies, who are suing
teenagers for downloading songs, and of whom I’ve made endless fun.”
But a far more intriguing story is referenced in Pogue’s
column: the story of author Steven Poole, who took a successful book, “Trigger
Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames,” and posted it for download on his blog. The book was
first published in 2000, to favorable reviews, and, according to Poole,
continues to sell well. But last November, as a simple experiment, he offered Trigger Happy as a free download, under
a Creatives Commons license, which
meant, if not in legal terms, but in technical reality, “no strings attached.” He
asked only that “if you like the book, you can leave a tip via PayPal,” and
provided a link for PayPal donations.
The results were, to say the least, disappointing from a
financial perspective. As Poole reports in an April 2008 blog entry,
“the proportion of [31,697] people who left a tip after downloading Trigger
Happy was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%,” and as he comments later in the responses to
his entry, “the average donation was a (very reasonable) couple of bucks. The
total was a vanishingly minuscule fraction of what I earned from the book’s
traditional publication.”
What
I found most important here are the nearly 230 comments found in both the original
blog entry offering the book, and in its follow-up. A few of the comments are
of course inane, but the sum of the comments (with a generous series of
responses from Poole) amounts to the most fascinating discussion I’ve yet
encountered on how writing and publishing are faring in the ongoing struggle to
find an effective new business model that will encourage book-length
publications (rather than articles and blogs) to flourish in the age of the
Internet.
I’m thrilled to have received permission to post Heidi Julavits’ short piece of creative nonfiction, "The Writers in the Silos." It projects the future of publishing as nothing has before.
I first encountered it in the September 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine, though it was a reprint from “Creative Nonfiction Issue #31: Imagining the Future,” published by the provocative journal Creative Nonfiction.
As I wrote to Ms. Julavits when I discovered "The Writers in the Silos": “It’s hilarious, of course, but also wonderfully anarchic and apparently prescient. I was completely delighted to have found it.”
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
(Click here to read "The Writers in the Silos.")
An article appeared on May 5th in the New York Times called “Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In.” In glowing terms, it recounts the apparently amazing transformation of media giant IDG from primarily a print-based magazine publisher to an online publisher.
The article moved quickly onto the Times’ most-read and most-blogged list (today it’s still #5 on the most-blogged list), and I figured that I’d just let that one go, particularly as my blog has been focusing quite a bit on magazines for the last week.
But I couldn’t resist getting a comment on the record, and so posted a remark on Jeff Jarvis’ excellent Buzz Machine blog. I wrote:
“I read this article with some incredulity. It reads more like a corporate brochure than a carefully-researched piece of journalism. First of all, IDG is privately held, so there’s no way to check into what’s been happening to the overall sales and profitability of the company in its transition to digital.
“Mr. McGovern states ‘The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,’ and the major evidence offered is that ‘today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.’
“OK on that…but what about before the dotcom bust? I’d be surprised if the profitability of the publication was not significantly higher.
“I applaud IDG on its bold moves, but wonder if Mr. McGovern doesn’t sometimes wish for the good old days before the Web.”
I’d have let it go at that if I’d not today stumbled upon an entry on Rex Hammock’s also excellent rexblog.com. The blog entry, titled, “Print is not a burden. Useless drivel is the burden. So ignore this post,” is for me the final word on the affair, although it’s really more about content than the IDG story, per se.
Just one quote: “Unfortunately, saying “print is a burden” implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden.…If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me — that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.”
A powerful reminder that the medium is not necessarily the message.
