Your LJ readers don’t pay you directly for reading your journal(1) – but they do pay for the advertising indirectly and this pays for the site maintenance and a bit of a profit for the folk running it. If they paid you directly you’d have to pay hosting fees.
There are two things going on here. One is the ability of content users and content creators to short circuit the existing distribution networks and share less of their profit with, mainly, the physical distribution arms of publishers. The second is the ability of content users to access content without paying anyone at all for it.
More generally, payment for IP is in a process of transition. There are still content users who are doing things the old fashioned way. Me and my mum and you by the sounds of it.
And think there is something about brand as an indicator of quality kicking around which your mate Bill draws out.
Folk who buy his books know him. They know what they are getting and they know that he will provide a product that meets the quality standard they expect – for the non-artistic elements of quality – typesetting, copy-editing etc as well the artistic ones.
This branding of quality, which used to be done by his publisher but now appears to be done by using his name is important I think. One of the services that existing channels for IP provide is a quality control regime.(2)
I also think there are issues of inertia here.
I’d be wary of reading too much about the future of new content creators into how things are currently operating for successful authors. I don’t think new technology has fully broken through yet. (3) I don’t think piracy has really broken through yet. I’m not sure how easy it is for non-technically minded people to do piracy compared to going to Waterstone’s to buy a physical book.
I suspect that holders of existing IP, both the content and the reputation and brand that go with the content, will want to put the wagons in a circle around their existing assets. I think there are two ways of doing this. Either fight very vigorously to make people stick to the old way of doing business. This involves the kind of the prohibition activity that we’ve seen with drugs which will ultimately make it more expensive and harder to do business with pirates.
The other alternative is to make doing business in what looks like the old fashioned way but is really a mix of social fund and patronage as easy and pleasant as possible.
People who make it easy to do business with them will be able to use existing protocols to extract cash from their work for longer.
There is also something here about the complexity of the work being created and how much the allied skills cost as a proportion of the whole. For a book I think it’s about 50:50 author : allied skills. 1 author and a handful of allied skills working adding up to 1 author’s worth of effort. For music
Given that copyright last for, what, life of author plus 70 years I reckon we’re going to be operating at least two system for the whole of the 21st Century.
(1) and very good value it is, too. (2) Less important if you are only paying £0.99 for a book and are prepared to stop reading it after a few pages. Which I’ve done with one of the Baen free books. (3) It’s still painfully difficult for me to watch BBC iPlayer on my TV. Literally painful.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-04-12 10:11 am (UTC)There are two things going on here. One is the ability of content users and content creators to short circuit the existing distribution networks and share less of their profit with, mainly, the physical distribution arms of publishers. The second is the ability of content users to access content without paying anyone at all for it.
More generally, payment for IP is in a process of transition. There are still content users who are doing things the old fashioned way. Me and my mum and you by the sounds of it.
And think there is something about brand as an indicator of quality kicking around which your mate Bill draws out.
Folk who buy his books know him. They know what they are getting and they know that he will provide a product that meets the quality standard they expect – for the non-artistic elements of quality – typesetting, copy-editing etc as well the artistic ones.
This branding of quality, which used to be done by his publisher but now appears to be done by using his name is important I think. One of the services that existing channels for IP provide is a quality control regime.(2)
I also think there are issues of inertia here.
I’d be wary of reading too much about the future of new content creators into how things are currently operating for successful authors. I don’t think new technology has fully broken through yet. (3) I don’t think piracy has really broken through yet. I’m not sure how easy it is for non-technically minded people to do piracy compared to going to Waterstone’s to buy a physical book.
I suspect that holders of existing IP, both the content and the reputation and brand that go with the content, will want to put the wagons in a circle around their existing assets. I think there are two ways of doing this. Either fight very vigorously to make people stick to the old way of doing business. This involves the kind of the prohibition activity that we’ve seen with drugs which will ultimately make it more expensive and harder to do business with pirates.
The other alternative is to make doing business in what looks like the old fashioned way but is really a mix of social fund and patronage as easy and pleasant as possible.
People who make it easy to do business with them will be able to use existing protocols to extract cash from their work for longer.
There is also something here about the complexity of the work being created and how much the allied skills cost as a proportion of the whole. For a book I think it’s about 50:50 author : allied skills. 1 author and a handful of allied skills working adding up to 1 author’s worth of effort. For music
Given that copyright last for, what, life of author plus 70 years I reckon we’re going to be operating at least two system for the whole of the 21st Century.
(1) and very good value it is, too.
(2) Less important if you are only paying £0.99 for a book and are prepared to stop reading it after a few pages. Which I’ve done with one of the Baen free books.
(3) It’s still painfully difficult for me to watch BBC iPlayer on my TV. Literally painful.