
Seminal Work Or Sloppy Thinking? - ojbyrne
http://editor.blogspot.com/2009/09/seminal-work-or-sloppy-thinking.html
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pg
Man, these journalists are so nice compared to the Internet trolls I'm used
to. I barely feel goaded into responding. But...

\- Do _Time_ and _The Economist_ actually switch lengths? It's true I only
looked at one week, but I found a clear trend of constant cost per weight of
paper used, not just between those two but also for heavier mags like _Foreign
Policy_.

\- Laura Bush makes more by (and only by) selling more copies, just like a
popular fabric pattern.

\- What I meant about the "printout of yesterday's news" was not that events
they covered happened the day before, but that it was literally a printout of
stories that had appeared the day before on the _Times_ 's web site.

\- His last point seems a repetition of the one about Laura Bush, but with
more uppercase.

~~~
psyklic
I found the original article insightful, but this journalist's rebuttals also
bring up interesting points.

\- "Does content affect price?" It seems the journalist and PG define "price"
differently -- is it the price to the consumer or to the publisher? Either way
affects profit, so both seem valid to me.

Hence, I feel the journalist has a valid point. Laura Bush will command higher
royalties. So, the price to the _publisher_ is increased (via higher
royalties/advances), because Laura Bush provides desirable content. The
journalist also states that while the price to the _consumer_ is not higher,
the publishers' business model is to sell more copies at a lower profit margin
per copy, which seems perfectly valid.

\- "Better journalism is slightly cheaper." In some cases, yes. In others, no.
Arguing over _Time_ vs. _The Economist_ seems to not answer the broader
question.

~~~
whopa
> Hence, I feel the journalist has a valid point. Laura Bush will command
> higher royalties. So, the price to the publisher is increased (via higher
> royalties/advances), because Laura Bush provides desirable content.

Is it really true that different authors can have wildly different royalty
rates? I thought the range only spanned a few percentage points.

Advances don't really count, since they are paid out of future royalties.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Of course it's true that authors make wildly different royalty rates. Does
anyone here really believe Stephen King makes the same royalty rates per book
as someone like Uwem Akpan?

It's simple market economics. Stephen King will sell far more copies which
means publishers will make far more money off his books. So he gets a
significantly higher cut of the per book profit (aka royalties) because
publishers will still end up making more money off his book than they will of
a Uwem Akpan book.

Put it this way, if Mr. King's publisher didn't pay him a higher royalty fee
don't you think another publisher would be willing to based on the large
amount of money at stake? So again we're back to basic economics.

~~~
whopa
Got a source for Stephen King's royalty rates being significantly above the
standard rates for other authors? Everything I've found says royalties range
from 10-15% for hardcover, like
<http://www.writersservices.com/res/ri_adv_royalties.htm>: "hardback royalties
on the published price of trade books usually range from 10% to 12.5%, with
15% for more important authors"

You talk about simple market economics, but the publishing industry seems to
be a cartel, and authors are on the whole largely shafted. The music industry
is the same way...

------
lionhearted
I'm not entirely sold on Graham's original point nor the author's rebuttal,
but the piece has got a couple pretty big hypocrisies. For instance, both from
the piece:

> Calling the NYT "a printout of yesterday's news" is snotty and snarky, to be
> sure, but it's also inaccurate.

> Graham needs some elementary economics and business instruction.

Like, calling out a multimillionaire technological innovator/investor on being
"snotty and snarky", then quipping (snottily and snarkily) that he needs
"elementary economics and business instruction" - okay... pot, meet kettle,
blackness.

~~~
omouse
_okay... pot, meet kettle, blackness._

That's irrelevant. Graham could still need economics and business instruction
even if the writer here was being snarky.

------
leif
I skimmed more and read less of the original article as I went along, but from
what I got, it just seems like he's trying too hard to make a clean, academic
argument regarding the publishing industry. It's been around so long that it's
full of exceptions, caveats, inefficiencies, and idiosyncrasies, not to
mention the countless people wrapped up in it financially and psychologically,
and this, I think, makes it too difficult to reason about as generally as he
tries.

My biggest beef, though, comes when he claims that publishers don't sell
content. Of course they do, and if they didn't, why did he even bring up the
price difference between Time and The Economist (is one printed on shinier
paper? Probably, but that's not why anyone buys The Economist). Some of the
price is obviously determined by the medium, too (just as in music sales), and
of course countless other factors, and there's no reason to try to narrow it
down to just one. When the method of conveyance disappears, everything will
shift around a bit and make everyone uncomfortable (like it's doing now), but
eventually settle down not far from where it started. These systems aren't
static sets of rules being followed blindly by their executives, they'll adapt
to fit their market.

This whole thing seems weird. When did Paul get this faultily academic?

------
philwelch
Howard: Graham's insult is correct only if he thinks only generic facts and
events are "news." That's a small fraction of what the New York Times presents
every day.

Reality: All of the "analysis", opinion, reviews, and other content is also
fairly easily replaced with free alternatives available online.

Howard: Famous, popular authors make LOTS more money than others. Laura Bush
got $1.7; by some reports Sarah Palin got $7 million. Graham's contention is
just plainly wrong.

Reality: Graham's contention was not that all authors make equal amounts of
money, but rather that all books are priced the same, based upon form rather
than content. Go to a bookstore. Similarly bound and printed books cost
similarly regardless of differences in content.

Howard: The decision to price all movies or CDs about the same is a marketing
decision that says absolutely nothing about the relative value of the content.

Reality: The market value of a product is its price.

~~~
timr
_"Reality: All of the "analysis", opinion, reviews, and other content is also
fairly easily replaced with free alternatives available online."_

That's not "reality", that's just your opinion.

I have a subscription to the New York Times, and I can tell you that I read
more -- and more diversely -- when I get it in printed format. So, yes,
there's a "free" alternative to getting it delivered to my doorstep, but I
find enough value in having the paper version that I'm willing pay for it.

And in any case, the author's point was to dispute the notion that a copy of
the New York Times is worthless after a day, not to suggest that you couldn't
obtain the content online.

~~~
philwelch
I was mocking the author's format--your immediate reaction would be better
addressed to him.

------
ggrot
I really appreciate how the article ends by saying that the author agrees with
Paul's main conclusions, but that the author disagrees with the arguments
being made. That's largely how I felt after reading Paul's essay too, but I
couldn't have articulated it as well.

------
madair
1\. Saying "actually cheaper" is not the point of the remark, it's just a
secondary remark about the specific comparison case, the point is that
populist and relatively crappy journalism has a comparable cost to to the
consumer as high quality journalism.

2\. Everyone knows that big book deals are edge cases. Why is he arguing the
outliers.

3\. He's answering the flowery anecdotal part of the essay as if it's a
serious evidential point? I presume he doesn't ever use anecdotes in his
writing? I hope not because all anecdotes by definition can be denied (i.e.
what is truth? i.e. incompleteness theorem)

4\. He valiantly tries to defend his position to a commentator on his blog who
points out that this is about cost to the consumer and eventual failure of a
model that treats the content like print on a fabric. He's pointing out the
very same thing that PG is pointing out, that this is their strategic plan,
and that is doomed. This is the part where the author's retort to PG's piece
really crashes and burns.

------
buro9
They're both right, they're both wrong.

It hurts so much to see a sloppy reprisal too, which is why I must now attempt
to make a sloppy one too.

In my mind this is the bit we need to be conscious of: Content has value, but
the distribution method sets the price.

And that is why both slightly miss the point in my mind.

If we look at music (because it's a simple model with many distribution
methods which helps create clear comparisons) we have this:

* A ring tone: £4.50 (ringtones-direct.com), midi file of 10 seconds.

* A CD album: £16.49 (HMV), average 10 tracks, £1.65 per track, full CD quality.

* A CD single: £1.99 (Tesco, if you can find singles), average 2 tracks, £1 per track, full CD quality.

* iTunes: £0.79 per track (lossy).

* MP3 .torrent: £0.00 per track (lossy).

* FLAC .torrent: £0.00 per track, full CD quality.

The content has value in all formats, but the highest price is associated to
the format in which the distribution is most directly controlled (phones, ring
tones, and the DRM scheme on some phones which force the use of a DRM signed
audio file), amusingly it's also the lowest quality representation of the
content.

As the control over the distribution fades the price plummets until we reach
bittorrents and the people doing the distribution where the price is zero,
although clearly value is still there as it wouldn't be downloaded otherwise.

What neither argument made was the distinction that the price is set by the
format and distribution and not by the content. The content has value, that is
undeniable, but value != price and that is what so many find hard to resolve.

The NYT is widely distributed and tends to have a lower price than the
Economist, which is still widely distributed but less so and has a higher
price. Specialist journals distributed as part of memberships to societys have
a very high price.

When I look at price, it's not the # of words that determines the price, it's
nearly always the format and distribution method. The more control that can be
exerted by the content owners, the higher they are able to set the price.

Disclaimer: I always write these things feeling agog at what I've read... I
have not researched things specifically and have not published any papers to
back up these assertions. Take them with a pinch of meh.

------
TomOfTTB
I'm glad someone said this. I, like I'm sure a lot of people here, have a
tremendous amount of respect for Paul Graham. So I really couldn't bring
myself to write a formal critique of this piece. But it's just a complete mis-
fire and this article (along with the one linked to in the update) go a long
way to showing why.

Anyway, thoughts should be up for critique no matter how respected the person
is who offers them so I'm glad someone jumped to the critique when others
(myself included) didn't.

------
Legion
If the New York Times is a "printout of yesterday's news", does that make The
Economist a "printout of last week's news"?

~~~
glymor
No, at it's best it makes it an analysis of last weeks news.

------
chuck_taylor
Both principals' original and rebutting words are at once smart and sloppy.
This speaks to the complexity of discussing the economics of knowledge and
taste.

For example, neither writer seems to have tackled the role of advertising
revenue and other intangibles in assessing the value of content.

There are comparatively few ads in an edition of The Economist, which might
explain why a subscription is so much greater than that of Time. And that
should be factored into any newsstand-price-per-page analysis.

And some weekly trade publications, delivered by mail at no small cost, are
monetarily free to the readers because subscribers pay with other currency --
information about themselves, their companies, and their spending plans.

I would also point out that the popularity of a fabric pattern or the life
story of Sarah Palin are related more to taste and fad than to the value of
any elusive wisdom, such as that derived from The New York Times or The
Economist.

Mr. Graham is correct in noting a demarcation between conveyance and content,
but as Mr. Weaver points out, it's not all that simple to proceed from there.

In any event, I've really enjoyed reading both sides of this, and I am
impressed by the overall quality of the comments.

------
mr_luc
( The following three paragraphs should be read aloud in the voice of Foghorn
Leghorn).

I'm no fancy big-city journalist, just a simple country kill-floor worker in a
JBS Swift slaughter house. I've developed a tolerance for organic discord.

Yet I'm annoyed by the messy thinking that dribbles helplessly throughout this
supposed rebuttal.

More than that, I'm irritated by the obvious purpose behind a loud 'rebuttal'
of obviously poor quality that finishes by saying _I_ _agree_ _and_ _I_
_thought_ _it_ _first_.

It was written because the author felt compelled to write something that he
and others could point to as a "rebuttal," a _response_. It doesn't matter if
the rebuttal is good or bad, true or untrue (bad and untrue, as it happens);
what matters is, now it's "been rebutted."

Let me grab my skinning knife. Unpronounceable Journalism Wunderkind, let's
you and me sit down and talk:

Graham's contention is that there aren't magazines that routinely cost
significantly more _per_ _page_ than the average for their format. If that is
false, then you've rebutted him. It's not sufficient to note that the length
of those magazines shows some variation.

Empirically, it seems that Graham's premise is sound. Magazines all seem to
have similar price per page. The next place where you can rebut him is by
answering the question: _Why?_ It's either because the content of all
magazines is equally valuable, or because the content is irrelevant to the
price of the magazine. Does the price vary, at least, with the format? Well,
of course. Large, glossy magazines cost more per page. But not more than other
large, glossy magazines.

Not rebutted - and no attempt was made.

Graham says that publishers get rich by selling lots of books, not by charging
more for better or more popular books. You say, "nuh-uh, Sarah Palin made lots
of money."

Uh. I'm not sure your training in journalism has equipped you to realize it,
but that's not a rebuttal. That's not anything.

Not rebutted - no attempt was made.

'The NYT in paper is yesterday's news.' Why, how dare he! Well, I never! It's
'snotty and snarky.' Ah, and it's "inaccurate." Because -- and this, see, is
where you give your reason and perform your debunking and unbunking and
generally get the bunk out -- because you're _pretty_ _sure_ that there's
stuff in there someone hasn't read yet. Never mind that the NYT itself
published those stories online.

Yesterday.

Finally, the question. "Why has the price mostly depended on the format, not
the content? Why didn't better content _cost_ more?" (Italics mine). You say,
loudly, that better content is more _profitable_ \-- because of volume.

Then you have the nerve to conclude by saying that you had all of the ideas
that Graham had, and you just have no respect for _his_ sloppy thinking and
reasoning.

You didn't refute, or even address, a single point made in the essay. The
"sloppy thinking and errors" were entirely your own. But now, you've
"addressed" it. Back-pats all around, face has been saved, as long as we
overlook the fact that your piece is drivel.

( Perhaps I'm wrong here. I often am. Certainly, you have domain knowledge
that could have contributed greatly to this discussion; I'd read any
substantive contributions with pleasure. )

