The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend) (Charles Stross)

Great read,

However, first he says:

"These days, a lot of newspapers look to cut their overheads by reducing their actual journalist and editor head-count — after all, these folks aren't contributing much to the bottom line .... But in the long term, it's insane: it's the kind of move that cuts one or two percentage points off the bottom line, but pisses off the subscribers."

Which I totally agree with, my local newspaper is just empty calories in that sense.

He then goes on to say

"Given that the crappiest spam blog is as useful to Google as the greatest virtuoso symphony performance or the Nobel prize winning novel, if it generates the same number of advertising click-throughs, they'd do just as well to spend the money on automated spambots."

Which is where I go astray. I am getting annoyed with Google junk results. If I am searching for weird niche tech stuff I get fine results, but if I look for products, general health information, financial info, or any of the things an "average person" looks for I just get crap. Spambot blogs, and the inevitable list of pages that are from heavily SEOd, but useless sites.

That has got to be driving people crazy, and if Google does not figure out how to weed out the useless content they will lose their users to some sort of trusted social networking bookmarking model. Already I see this on Facebook where my friends ask each other for links and sources.

Very good comments - worth reading through those.

I posted one too:

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Would your 3000 rabid fans be willing to sponsor you at $1/m in exchange for some kind of precious items? Like a personal thank you note and access to all your books in ebook format the minute they're done?

That'd net you $3000/m, which is not a huge amount, but a start. And maybe you can get more than $3000, by asking for a floating donation - i.e. set the minimum to $1/m but let them specify an amount (some people would possibly be willing to donate up to $10 or even rarely $50/m to you if they really are rabid fans?)... or by increasing your fan base... If you can reach new markets and get, say, 10'000 rabid fans instead, or if you can convince people who are not quite rabid fans to sponsor you anyway, you could make a very comfortable revenue from this subscription model.

Ultimately, you are a "business" whose product is a flow of cool new books. The current model suggests that people pay for book that you've already written, but perhaps you need to turn it on its head and ask people to pay for the books that you're going to write. This would basically be a kind of micro-patronage.

The situation isn't necessarily as bad as my essay implies. One of the commenters posted this link:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/apples-disruption-of-the-ebook-m...

(Attention-conservation version: The major publishers have done a deal with Apple whereby they'll be selling books on an agency basis rather than the wholesale model that's got them into such trouble with Amazon et al.)

And then there's this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/20/amazon_royality/

(Short attention span version: Amazon is spooked.)

Good discussion on the business models for newspapers and books. He explains why novelists will get squeezed by the ebook distributors (e.g. Amazon). Charles doesn't have a solution. Perhaps novelists should sell their stuff to the distributors and then hire marketers directly. However, in addition to providing marketing, the publishers serve as a (rough) indicator of quality -- someone had to believe in the material enough to put their money behind it. Maybe we need investors instead of publishers.

Would Street Performer Protocol be appropriate in this case?

http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html

The article earlier about NYT preparing to charge ("Prepare to charge!") for access got me thinking (again) about the same questions that cstross asked in his post.

I say good luck to NYT in their efforts, but as the OP says, it's a dead business model. I don't care if it works for the NYT or not, and if it does, great. I probably won't subscribe, but that's another tangent.

What does concern me is how or whether good journalism and writing will survive. I buy and read a few fiction and non-fiction books per year, far more than the average American although probably far less than the average HNer. I assume that ereaders will be made to my liking RSN, at which time I will buy few if any paper books. (I will greatly lament the loss of large and odd format books, much more profoundly than I currently miss vinyl album art.)

I assume that the trend will continue, and production of content in and of itself will be decreasingly lucrative. So trying to rely on selling content, or access to content, is going to get harder. Books will probably last a bit longer; if a news article is paywalled you can probably find a similar article elsewhere for free or cheaper, but in most cases there is no substitute for reading a particular story by a particular author. But in the end, even books won't be enough to make a living.

So what do you do if people won't buy what you're selling (access to)? ... Anything else!

In the case of journalism and books, what you can do is make those things the attraction to something else that people are willing to pay for.

In the case of newspapers, I'm not sure what they would sell besides advertising, but it'll have to be something. Maybe more in depth coverage of the same story (but attracting with mere summaries won't work). Maybe video about the story or related subjects.

Maybe instead of selling advertising for stuff, they'll sell the stuff directly. "Nice car Bob." "Like it? I'm leasing it from the New York Times."

For some authors, they might sell editing services, book design and similar to other authors. 100 years ago miners went broke and died looking for gold, but the hardware stores and outfitters made a good living supplying the miners. If you're an author that other writers like, that could be one way to make a living.

Bottom line is revenue is being siphoned or disappearing, and you'll have to change.

I think the main problem with his post is that he sees his audience as fixed. If, in ebook form, his books are priced lower, but he gets a greater percentage, there's the possibility that it will balance out.

For example, one thing that stops me buying books is what to do with them when you're finished. Some books you want to keep, others you want to dispose. It all takes space, management and unnecessary handling. I fully expect to have an ebook reader one day, and when that happens, I expect to greatly increase the number of books I purchase and read. As it is I re-read many of my books time and again because going and buying new ones is a hassle. And yes, that means through Amazon. You've got to wait for it to arrive, store it, decide whether to keep it etc etc. Ebooks : click, download, read. With bulk disk space, you'll never dispose of a book again.

If I were an established author (but not JK Rowling) I would be depressed. If I were just starting out, I would be excited about the possibility. It's just like the music business all over again. Bands have made online work, Authors will be able to do the same.

"If they're smart, News International's managers might start to roll back the damage of 30 years of complacent lard-assed journalism — hire new investigators, train them to go for the throat and chase the scandals, and start raising hell. A combination of targeted micro-news coverage and turning over rocks to see what's underneath could pay off. The Daily Telegraph started an avalanche running in the UK last year with their series of explosive revelations on the subject of MP's expenses; there hasn't been anything like it in the USA this century, as the insider-culture of the Washington beltway has captured the journalistic corps. When the press cosy up to power, the result is a culture of collusion, and both news and open and accountable government suffer."

We've all lamented the quality or simple lack of investigative journalism these days. I really hope there is a shift back toward news organizations going for quality over regurgitated crap.

I have been thinking that a subscription model could work if you got enough big name papers to go behind a common pay wall and remove themselves from Google. Really unless there was enough to put a dent in the quality of news you get by using Google's aggregater then it wouldn't work. A simple common system though that gave access to many publications content with a single payment could be the only thing convenient enough to work, I guess the payments could work in a similar vein to cable TV packages.

The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-artis...

Maybe Accelerando could be made into a movie...

Who could direct it?

if he could write interactive fiction, then he could sell subscriptions to connect to the server and play/read.

Facts of Life time:

You cannot control who reads your book. Once it's "out there" it's going to be all over hell and back. It might be illegal, it might suck, but there you have it.

So find some things you can control and work with those. You can control who gets to see your book first -- that's a highly honored place. You can control who gets to provide feedback as you write it, or who gets to name the characters, or who gets to appear inside the book.

You can control how interactive the book is -- you could have selected special people role-play some of your characters and provide you with live arguments about what the character "really" would do in a situation like this. You can mix video, games, and 3-D immersion to make the book more of a sensually-rich experience (and harder to copy because it doesn't fit into a neat category). You can even set up an online market to have readers decide which topics/plots they think will make the most money -- and cut them in for a small piece of the action.

Don't weep over the things that are gone. Concentrate on what works, mix in several ideas, and run with it. Some of these ideas are old and hackneyed (multi-media books, for instance) but with the right mix you might just pull it off. Look at how many times 3-D flopped before Cameron picked it up for Avatar. Like Cameron, you have to keep the business model moving or it will easily be overtaken by technology.

It's a great time to be a writer, but probably pretty scary too. We IT guys have been in this constantly-changing business model stuff for some time. Welcome to the party.