

The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend) (Charles Stross) - jfischer
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/the-monetization-paradox-or-wh.html

======
dan_the_welder
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.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Agreed. I posted saying basically, he was dismissing Google's attachment to
good content far too readily - consider YouTube, where they pay royalties per
music playback. Might they do something similar for books?

~~~
dan_the_welder
Sure, crap only wins in the short term and psychologically speaking the last
10 years is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I have a coat older than Google. I have drill press older than the entire
internet. I have books that predate the transistor.

This is all new and we are just barely coming to terms with a giant sea change
in every industry and cultural institution.

We need more ideas and techniques to try, old ones, new ones and everything in
between.

------
swombat
Very good comments - worth reading through those.

I posted one too:

\---

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.

------
cstross
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...](http://www.idealog.com/blog/apples-disruption-of-the-ebook-market-
has-nothing-to-do-with-the-tablet)

(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.)

~~~
jseliger
_(Short attention span version: Amazon is spooked.)_

I see why: I just bought a Kindle because I'm in English grad school:
[http://jseliger.com/2010/01/18/buying-a-kindle-why-didnt-
i-t...](http://jseliger.com/2010/01/18/buying-a-kindle-why-didnt-i-think-of-
this-last-semester) and realize that I'd rather have a Kindle than buy another
~$200 worth of Nortons and so forth. Two days of using it shows what the
Kindle is missing: iTunes for documents, especially because .pdfs still don't
play nicely on the Kindle. The closest substitute I've found is Calibre at
<http://calibre-ebook.com> . It's not good enough or well-thought out enough
and probably never will be. I'm tempted to start trying to produce an iTunes
replacement, but I'm not good enough too.

This leaves a very wide hole for Apple, even leaving aside the hardware issue.

------
jfischer
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.

------
stralep
Would Street Performer Protocol be appropriate in this case?

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

~~~
CWuestefeld
I read that paper some time back, and it strikes me as a pretty good idea.

In short, a (potential) writer would propose: I'll write _this_ book for a
minimum of $X. Interested readers would put into an escrow system whatever
that book is worth it to them. If the total escrowed contributions reach $X
(presumably by some deadline), the author will write the book and release it
for all to read, collecting the escrowed funds. If the kitty doesn't reach $X,
or the author doesn't make good, the escrowed funds are returned.

Obviously this generalizes to other media as well.

The only think I don't see this covering well is the speculation on as-yet-
unproven writers. Who is going to take a chance on you so you can make your
reputation? Maybe that doesn't matter; I think that today, writers, musicians,
etc., typically produce their first works on their own to get a publisher
interested.

~~~
JulianMorrison
it probably works better at the granularity of "chapter" instead of "novel".

~~~
CWuestefeld
I disagree. I don't even want to start the thing if I don't _know_ that there
is an ending. If I buy a couple of chapters and then it peters out, I'm
cheated out of my ending.

Also, I'd want the writer to produce a complete book. I imagine that sometimes
developments in later chapters will force some revision to the earlier ones,
as plot lines are fleshed out. Releasing a chapter at a time won't allow that.

~~~
garethm
Many of Charles Dickens' works were written in this way. They were published
in periodicals and magazines, and he would normally be writing them as they
were being published, rather than writing the whole book first.

------
nfnaaron
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.

------
brc
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.

------
euroclydon
"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.

~~~
robryan
Problem is though if your already losing money, increasing your quality is
initially going to send you bankrupt even sooner. Turning around your
readership numbers I'd imagine would be a slow process over many years.

------
robryan
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.

------
cma
The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights

[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-
artis...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-artistic-
freedom-voucher-internet-age-alternative-to-copyrights/)

------
rbanffy
Maybe Accelerando could be made into a movie...

Who could direct it?

~~~
rubinelli
The only name that comes to mind is David Cronenberg.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Wow. Yes.

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

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

