Just got an email from Steve Stirling who noticed that WoC was back at number 1 on the Amazon SF best seller lister over the weekend. That’s kinda mind-boggling given that you can get it for free at Suvudu.com.
Unless of course the original internet business model of just giving stuff away somehow turned out to be valid.
Might dwell on this later, but right now I have kids to wrangle.
Stirling is giving Sword of the a Lady away for free – but not the whole thing, which means schmucks like me have to buy it to find out what happens.
Weird, isn’t it? I read the article you wrote for The Monthly online for free, yet what did I do yesterday when I saw the June issue? I bought it of course.
It’s because no one really wants to curl up with an electronic device. Happy to read a teaser on line – especially knowing that by the generosity of the author I can read the whole thing on line IF I WANT TO – but who really wants to? Once hooked into the story, a reader is going to get a copy of the book and enjoy the rest of it in a warm spot in the sun.
Well, that’s what I’d do.
Reading it online is like listening to a CD. Having the book is going to the concert.
The difference probably isnt that big but you see where I’m going….
My Mum recently suggested I give away some of my books to save room on my shelves – My response: “But I like those books! Why would I give them away?” I considered adding that I might was to re-read them one day, but it’s actually pretty rare that I read a book more than once. The truth is I’m attached to those little dog-eared suckers. I like being reminded of the stories when I walk past the shelves. I just can’t imagine myself getting as attached to “story.rtf” in the “E-books” folder on my computer. Perhaps the younger generations, armed with more user-friendly book readers and simply not knowing any other way, will find bridging that mental gap much easier.
What Hughsey said. oh and Lobes as well….
Guys:
That had been Baen Books business model for their Free Library for years. They had depended on giving for free authors first books to develop readership and brand loyalty for the follow up novels (our wags compare that to giving away drugs for free). Eric Flint sold Jim Baen on the original concept and guess what it works, fabulously.
If anyone wants to check it go to the Baen Books website and look for the Free Library offerings.
Do notice that Baen also started web subscriptions many years ago where folks can download unencripted copies of their books at a fair price.
The rest of the industry seem to be playing catch with them now.
Make mine Baen!
Listen to Jose. Nothing I’ve seen disputes the Baen model. Baen runs counter to the current publishing group think – and it really does work. Golly . . .innovative and revolutionary even. :)) The book business does seem to be awfully staid and conservative at times.
Interestingly. IIRC Steve Stirling was against Baens’s model. I believe it was about intellectual property. Given his legal background – his reasons were probably good at the time.
The Melbourne Age seems to not note the upside, or if JB has agreed to it.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/book-em-danno/2009/06/07/1244313033351.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Interesting thing though is that it’s not the followup novels are topping the list though, it’s the very same novel which is available (if I’m hearing JB right.) I agree with Jose’s point for followups but this result is very interesting in itself.
Hmmm, if only the music industry would take note of the Baen model too.
Awesome. Congrats.
Hey, with John Ringo’s books you occasionally end up buying three copies. The first is the E-ARC (Electronic Advance Readers Copy) because you really want to know what the Kildara and the other furries are up to, the Websubscriptions with the final version of the story and before Kindle, the hardback.
Now show me another publisher that sells as much, at least in their genere. I like to think that Baen Books are the guerilla fighters of the publishing world.
Of course, it explains why so many of their authors and fans truly believe that the application of high explosives resolves almost every problem. I’m sure that Jim Baen is proud of us wherever he is.
Dr Yobbo – there is a bunch of articles where Eric Flint talks about how the Free Library was going – and he found the same thing. Sure, it helps get a following for the following books (and that’s how you sell it to the publishers) but it also seems to help the current book. He says the sales peak, then start dropping (usual pattern for books). Then after they are released as free ebooks, the sales go back up for a bit, then start dropping again, but not as fast.
Whether this will continue to happen if ebook readers (or Crunch pads, or smart phones, or …) become a much more accepted way to read books, I don’t know. I’m happy to read books electronically – out of the last 500 odd books I’ve bought, only about 20 are paper books. But I know I’m currently in a minority, so for the immediate future the free ebook seems to be a good advertising tool. (This assumes the book is good enough for people to want to keep reading a paper version, of course.)
I seem to remember a certain reprobate hawking copies of falafel to try get the momentum going, on what is now an icon of Australian publishing.
Jose. I think Jim is smiling in publishers heaven right now.
Given how he felt about the nanny state and Progressivism and all.
“Unless of course the original internet business model of just giving stuff away somehow turned out to be valid.”
I never thought there’d ever been any serious contradiction to it. Sure some people did a lot of handwaving about how you “obviously” couldn’t make money giving things away, but only people who didn’t understand the principles. No offence to anyone here, but for that’s banjo-plucking, slack-jawed logic in the post-internet world. Open source has made a lot of people a lot of money on the software and infrastructure support side of things. Most of the internet still runs on open source software, and while aggresive marketing has gained Microsoft a lot of ground, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
There’s no reason to suspect Eric Flint’s reasoning about how things would work with writing would not pan out, as Baen’s success with the back-catalogs of folks who’ve gone on the free library demonstrates. It’s almost that the actual business model itself doesn’t matter. Most people don’t in fact have the view that if you can get something for free, there’s no reason to pay for its production. The internet age has made the issue more pervasive, but really it goes back as far as Walter Benjamin’s ‘Art in the age of mechanical reproduction’: the point is ensuring the artist gets an income from their work somehow. It doesn’t have to be per-unit and the economic conditions that enabled publishers and record companies to print money based on per-unit sales of material that is really about IP, are really conditions that have to be seen as having a specific historical location and one that we’re at the end of. People who can read a book for free will buy a print copy so they know the writer is getting something out of it, so long as they know that’s what the deal is.
Hell a tip-jar is a workable business model if you play the fiddle well enough…
The people writing open source software aren’t making much money out of it. The hackers working at IBM and Red Hat would be making significantly more working for Microsoft or Oracle. The theory is that you make your money back in supporting open source software. That’s the theory anyway. Name any billionaires that have made their fortune supporting open source software. Shuttleworth doesn’t count – he made his money before he started Ubuntu. He’s not making money on Ubuntu or Canonical.
There certainly isn’t any money in writing open source textbooks.
Google saved a lot of money using open source software, but that didn’t make anything for the people who actually write the stuff. So sure, the effort of open source programmers made Larry Page and Sergey Brin very wealthy. That money didn’t send the kids of open source programmers to school, buy them lunch or pay them rent – because the open source programmers didn’t get a cent.
Torvalds made (and lost) his money on Open Source Linux companies that gave him stock options as a thank you – but he would have made much more money with his talent as a code monkey for a big software firm. There are a lot of failed entrepreneurs that have made more money than Linus Torvalds – and none of them did 1 hundredth of the amount of work he did or got their operating systems on 1 thousandth the numbers of computers.
The guy that founded the open source philosophy – Richard Stallman? Does not own a house. Doesn’t even own a car. Lives in his office.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Larry Ellison all made their fortune by not opening up their code. Opening up your code is the way to help others make their fortune. If you want to donate your time so that others make money – that’s a good and noble thing – but there are more noble ways to donate your time than writing code for people that are going to make money off your effort.
Orin, you’re arguing with something at cross purposes with the point I was making. I do think what you’re saying is obviously true but misses the point a little. However I’m not an evangelist and really don’t care to do the advocacy thing. It isn’t a dichotomy really, I think both open and closed source have to exist, they work to different models and I don’t think your characterisation of open source as “donation” really covers it. In infrastructure, it isn’t really a zero sum game.
Has it won a Ditmar yet?
Congrats on the sales jump. Hard to read a laptop lying down in bed or floating in the pool.
McKinney – you can read a Kindle lying down. It weighs less than a book, and the battery lasts for well over a week if you don’t have the cell-phone circuitry engaged.
I don’t know that I’d try a Kindle floating in a pool, but I *know* I wouldn’t risk any dead-tree books in that situation :-)
I hold the book on the side of the pool, so it stays dry. also, paper dries out eventually if you don’t do more that get a few drops on it. ATM
It works, I went out and bought the paperback last week, after looking at the on-line version you linked to off mini-burger. I had given the original to a family member, and wanted to re-read the series.
It also worked for Cory Doctorow with “Little Brother”
6 weeks in the New York Times best seller list (still there) and still in hardback
The e-book is free and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license
… and Orin, most authors of Open Source software aren’t necessarily in it for the money.
tc
Damian “Most people don’t in fact have the view that if you can get something for free, there’s no reason to pay for its production.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t true for Anime otaku who freely watch torrented fansubs, but don’t buy officially licensed products. Mainstream anime production companies have claimed for years that fansubs have hurt the industry, which has indirectly lead to several American companies who produce Licensed content in English to close down.
Now some companies have started streaming content only hours after the shows have been seen in Japan, in an attempt to win back fansub viewers to official product. I hope that this will indeed work, but my skepticism is high..
Sorry to go off topic kinda.. but while the medium is different, the intent is the same..
Not related to anything here but I want to get this off my chest… copy of a letter I just sent to the Monthly…
Wow, I just read John Birmingham’s story in the Monthly, and, um, is it a satirical piece?
I think it must be, because some of the notable effects of this recession are, according to the author, people in Balmain or thereabouts having to eat apples instead of strawberries and others having to – wait for it – dip into their savings. Some of them are even saying “no” to some of their kids’ requests for purchases. SHOCK HORROR!
My God, if that’s Balmain, I wonder how people on the north shore and in the east are holding up. Some of them might even be dining in from time to time. Let’s find out. Please, these are stories that NEED to be written.
Another beef is that most of the research appears to have been done online: blogs and whatnot. I like to think that the Monthly is a bit more REAL, with writers doing their research out there in the real world. It seems like pretty lazy journalism to me. Funny though – I think. It is satire, right? Is it?
By the way, single parents with NO savings also read the monthly. I can personally vouch for that.
Best regards,
Jim
I.I.INCOMING !
The monthly are just about to have a record sales month as Burgers run out to read the article as a drip feed until AA.
Where’s the doofus from K.C., Missouri? Tell Tonto there’s are History positions open at West Point and a number of military bases. He needs to check-out: USA Jobs. That is – if indeed he was honorably discharged and does in fact have a masters in History.
How do I know? Medical retirement sucks. I’m qualified for many of those six figure vacancies. If I return to work, I want to do it in a big way.
J.
I don’t know what’s up with the “there’s are.”
J.
I’ll pass on your very kind recommendation, such as it’s is.
Tell you what Jim, next time you get a four thousand word cover story dropped on you at the very last moment in the middle of another deadline, please give us all a heads up. I’d love to see how you handle it. Walkley Awards all around would be my guess.
John.. relax, take SWMBO out to dinner and a bottle of something really good… the deadline is making you bite the trolls.
Darkman : Actually. John is being uncharacteristically mellow. And that does worry me.
The calm before the storm?