Information as a money-making proposition
This is intended as an opening article in an irregular series, courtesy haiku.
The premise is that it’s possible for businesses to make a bit of money on the side via Kindle and the like. Significant to me in the PC Pro article was:
There’s nothing new about selling information online, and it’s still regarded by many naive newcomers as the best way to make money. However, the traditional methods rarely work nowadays because internet users expect a default price of zero. Even if you sidestep this prejudice by providing information that clearly isn’t available elsewhere in the public domain, you’ll still need to build proper marketing and payment platforms to profit from it.
But now the advent of ebook readers – the Kindle, in particular, has made such devices mainstream – has muddied the water to the potential benefit of sellers of information. For many people a Kindle publication is just as much a “book” as a paperback, and they expect books, even ebooks, to come at a price (in fact, price is regarded – especially for non-fiction – as a measure of quality just as it is in many other markets).
The essential difference between Amazon’s ebook market and Apple’s App Store is that in the latter, prices were driven to rock-bottom almost immediately, perhaps because there was no pre-existing model for comparison. The ebook, on the other hand, has a clear real-world equivalent that can be used to derive a sensible relative price. Given that the physical cost of storing and delivering an ebook is practically zero, customers expect Kindle version prices to be comparable to, but a bit cheaper than, their paperback equivalents.
Obviously the idea is attractive. I’ve thought of doing my old job online but that will involve considerable investment. We had ideas of making Albion Alliance into a thinktank, headhunting talented writers but the issue was that everyone else was doing that too and as the writer above wrote, the default value of text online is expected to be zero. I for one will not subscribe for money to a newpaper or online magazine. As more and more do it, I refer to a lesser and lesser range.
Regarding works of fiction in a heavily oversubscribed market, I have no illusions. I can certainly write and let’s not be modest about how well I can string words together. The issue is that my themes, mindset and sometimes bleating style doesn’t go down well – eliminating the ponderous and making he awkward more mainstream is also an issue with me.
In short, I don’t think I’d ever sell as a popular author, though readers who do wade through the novels etc. will at least get surprises. Truth is that no one really wants to read from someone familiar – there has to be something substandard about it, one thinks. And yet, if you read a couple of the books advertised in my sidebar, you might be hugely surprised again at the quality.
I don’t know how to approach the thing.
Filed under: Literature & performing arts
Free stuff is an illusion. If every ‘page read’ was automatically billed ( say,on your telecom bill) at 1/10c or even 1/100c and split between the writer and the ISP, the writers would get an income. The better or more ‘read’ the page, the more income it would realize. It could replace ISP fees.
I currently fork over $50 a month just to be ‘connected’ and have 50 gigs ‘free’ at broadband speeds (after 50g the speed drops to painfully slow). I can browse, download and upload whatever I wish. But I would happily pay the ‘producers’ instead. It might even deter me from browsing crap.
What I like about e-books is that people can go direct to market without so called experts and editors making the decision of what (or indeed who) is in the market place. But the concept is similar with, for example Blogs vs Legacy media. The number of blogs is/was vast, the number of those that go on to be well known or successful is a small percentage. Likewise with e-books part of the fun is checking out low price and free books from Authors who have given it a go and they might then find a small market. They might find enough of a market to keep going, but so small that they would have never got out there with the legacy print framework where a wide audience had to be somewhat assured before anything would go to print.
I did put up a selection of old blogposts on Amazon as an ebook, as much as anything to see and experience how easy or tough e-publishing would be – and it’s pretty straight-forward. The danger is of course in the absence of an editor or proof reader some books don’t make the cut as presentation was an after-thought. I had to go back when I saw it formatted and tinker, but on the whole a low effort needed for a great experience. My hope is to complete a Novel I am working on and actually publish that in the next year or so. All very exciting to me as I doubt any publisher would have gone near my work otherwise. I get to do it more as a hobby but there is that element of “what if” to keep things exciting.
Having said all of that I do agree that where information was £zero and the paywall goes up I look elsewhere. The Telegraph recently put up an International Paywall so I only read that now from work (UK VPN). I seem to recall the expectation a decade or more ago was that the websites would generate so much traffic the online advertising would make up for the loss in hardcopy sales, but again they failed to foresee the true wonder of the interweb and factor in the dilution of their market.
“I don’t think I’d ever sell as a popular author”
I know I won’t, but with me it’s a hobby. I suspect the Kindle market is heavily skewed towards big sellers, so it’s either huge sales or peanuts.
For me, blogging is a form of writing where the possibilities are much wider and feedback much more immediate and personal. That’s why I like it.
Writing a popular blog which generates some ad revenue is possibly a more realistic prospect than generating income via ebooks.
As ever though, popularity often exacts a price.