Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Why does digital media cost so much?
Paul Keith:
I can't say for the general community but it could even be less than that.
People generally remember a free e-book connected to a blog more than they remember a cheap e-book connected to a central repository.
...but with that said, an e-book is even better if it's connected to a newsletter to me. (Feels more authentic)...than a download link.
Generally speaking it just comes off to me that selling and not just publishing is itself becoming a revolution.
If you're a self-publisher, you no longer want people to pay you after they acquired the item especially with digital items. Now the better marketing schemes are those where the author makes you want to pay prior to acquiring an e-book and so by the time you acquired the book, the donation link is merely a formality in case people acquired your e-book elsewhere but most of the payers are coming from direct "already thinking of paying" customers.
I forgot the term but it goes something like "nowadays it's not about attracting people but keeping their attention on what you're selling." I would think this goes especially for e-books where if you can get people to download a free e-book and donate, you can sell a 1$ e-book and then you can sell a 10$ e-book better than if you have a central repository where you always sell 1$ e-book in the hopes of being found. (although sites like lulu help too but that's where the trade-off of having a donation link comes - if they acquire it on your blog, I think it turns your readers away but if it's spread out over the internet, people are more tolerant and will click on the donate link)
Paul Keith:
Btw here's a mashable link for those wondering what central repositories there are:
http://mashable.com/2009/03/01/publish-book/
I would say aside from Lulu, CreateSpace is the only one I know of but I don't know how well off they are after the e-book price hike from Kindle books.
Deozaan:
I think this thread is getting a bit sidetracked from what I intended, and that some of you are missing the point of my inquiry.
The problem with greed is that often consumers are greedy too in that they want cheap but high quality books that would put less food on the author's plate than if they just asked for donations directly. :P
-Paul Keith (July 05, 2010, 12:53 PM)
--- End quote ---
I specifically mentioned that this centralized platform would give higher royalties to the creator(s) due to leaving out (or rather, minimalizing) the middleman and all the dead-tree publishing costs. It costs less to produce, so you can still charge customers less while paying the author/artist/band more.
I'm not really interested in a platform where anybody can self-publish, but even if they could, it does not guarantee anybody would want to pay for whatever crap somebody puts on there. It's still a business. In order to make money you'd have to provide something of value people are willing to give up their money for. Crappy music and books will not get bought (much) and excellent books and music will. Survival of the fittest.
you're basically trading "paper" book vs. self-published e-book with no guarantee of quality.-Paul Keith (July 05, 2010, 02:17 PM)
--- End quote ---
First of all, anybody who thinks that just because a book is published by a big publisher it has a quality guarantee is wrong. It's not hard to find spelling, grammar, or other typesetting errors in books. And that doesn't even go into details of whether the content is high quality, since that's more a matter of opinion. You can also look at other closed systems (like Apple's App/iTune's Store) to see that just because has to pass a "screening test" doesn't mean everybody is going to want it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't buy a book or music just because I see an advertisement that makes it look cool. I generally buy books and music due to word of mouth recommendations or from artists/authors I already know and love.
In my entire life I can only think of one music album I got based on an advertisement and guess why? Because during the advertisement they played the music, so I already knew I liked it (or at last what I heard of it).
But maybe now I'm participating in the digression here. My point of this thread is that the technology we have in this digital age is enough to reduce costs of production to negligible amounts. So why are the traditional rates being charged? I understand why it started that way, since that's what it costs to actually produce the goods and make a good profit. But why are authors and artists still selling themselves short to publishing houses or music labels who take most of the money for themselves while charging customers what is now an exorbitant amount (considering cost of production) for digital media?
Authors/artists would make more, customers would pay less, and the middleman (digital platform) would still make a nice skimming off the top for providing the service of connecting media creators with media consumers.
It's a win/win/win for everybody!
Sure, the traditional music labels and publishing houses are probably greedy and don't want to adapt to the new reality (we have seen that with RIAA and MPAA) but I guess what I'm saying is, how come nobody has come up with a better model and the media creators (authors/music artists/etc.) dumped the greedy guys in favor of what would really get them more money and probably more exposure, since more people would probably be buying the cheaper goods.
Am I just asking too soon, and is it just a matter of time? Or is there something else holding everything back? Why aren't the big-name NYT best-selling authors doing something like this? Especially since they already have the fame to successfully migrate to the new system, bringing their fans along with them.
JavaJones:
Better models/systems exist, but inertia still hasn't caught up, and it's looking like what we might get is simply a new set of media conglomerates who fix prices among themselves in the digital world, just as we had the RIAA, MPAA, and their members (Sony, BMG, Universal, etc.) doing so through to today in the traditional distribution channels. They all still exert significant influence too, but even as they wane new giants like Apple and Amazon are springing up, both massively top-down commercially driven businesses, not "for the masses by the masses" systems. I think even as the mass media delivery and access systems change, perhaps the underlying mentality of top-down, advertising-driven, publisher-focused approaches will take longer to catch up to the technology. Artists are afraid not to make money off their product, and the old systems and large-scale publishers still do a good job of convincing them that they're needed. The new replacements will do the same (Amazon, etc.).
Why doesn't everyone go independent? Few want to be the first ones to jump in, and there's too much fragmentation still for any clear winner. Who wants to sign up to the "self publisher" that ends up going under? So out of fear of choosing the wrong option, many choose none. Also I doubt that whichever "self publisher" succeeds and rises above the rest will really be much different than what we have now; it may even be Amazon or Apple or another current rising superpower that ends up being "the one".
Kind of a depressing outlook I know. There's massive potential in technology, but our relationships to it, and to the content built on/in it, doesn't change at nearly the same rate. We as a culture, society as a whole, doesn't embrace what it enables you to do until long after the fact. Look back at the history of recorded music, TV, even the printing press (you mean monks who hand copy will be out of a job!? GASP!) and much more. It has happened this way time and again, I doubt this time will be much different, though the potential is there for wonderful revolution/evolution.
- Oshyan
Paul Keith:
I specifically mentioned that this centralized platform would give higher royalties to the creator(s) due to leaving out (or rather, minimalizing) the middleman and all the dead-tree publishing costs. It costs less to produce, so you can still charge customers less while paying the author/artist/band more.
--- End quote ---
Oh sorry Deozaan. This reply wasn't so much saying you didn't provide an argument as much as replying to Innuendo saying "nope, not end of thread".
First of all, anybody who thinks that just because a book is published by a big publisher it has a quality guarantee is wrong. It's not hard to find spelling, grammar, or other typesetting errors in books. And that doesn't even go into details of whether the content is high quality, since that's more a matter of opinion. You can also look at other closed systems (like Apple's App/iTune's Store) to see that just because has to pass a "screening test" doesn't mean everybody is going to want it.
--- End quote ---
They may be wrong but that's what the majority feels like.
I'm not so much pointing out that there's a perfect quality guarantee as much as pointing out "it's no different from many people going gaga over Apple's products".
It's an emotional judgement call rather than a logical one.
But maybe now I'm participating in the digression here. My point of this thread is that the technology we have in this digital age is enough to reduce costs of production to negligible amounts. So why are the traditional rates being charged? I understand why it started that way, since that's what it costs to actually produce the goods and make a good profit. But why are authors and artists still selling themselves short to publishing houses or music labels who take most of the money for themselves while charging customers what is now an exorbitant amount (considering cost of production) for digital media?
--- End quote ---
That's the thing. They're not.
...but really the issue is best answered by those individual authors.
There are actually lots of e-books being sold over the internet.
Am I just asking too soon, and is it just a matter of time?
--- End quote ---
Yep. That's it in my opinion/
Too soon is relative though.
It's like asking why no one would make a Booster Gold movie or a Shazam movie or a Night Thrasher movie or a Maximum Carnage movie or a Question movie.
You can speed it up by actually making the movie yourself or you can get what you want but still not at the price you want like with lulu.com's e-books.
Or is there something else holding everything back? Why aren't the big-name NYT best-selling authors doing something like this? Especially since they already have the fame to successfully migrate to the new system, bringing their fans along with them.
--- End quote ---
Actually guys like Neil Gaiman have done such things. From wikipedia:
To celebrate the 7th anniversary of the blog, the novel American Gods was provided free of charge online for a month.
--- End quote ---
It's all about marketing and timing so as not to devalue their own books.
...but it's again a macro-issue with lots of tentacles holding such concepts like central repositories, cheap e-book reasons, lack of someone taking the opportunity to prove everyone wrong while getting richer...
@JavaJones
Kind of a depressing outlook I know. There's massive potential in technology, but our relationships to it, and to the content built on/in it, doesn't change at nearly the same rate. We as a culture, society as a whole, doesn't embrace what it enables you to do until long after the fact. Look back at the history of recorded music, TV, even the printing press (you mean monks who hand copy will be out of a job!? GASP!) and much more. It has happened this way time and again, I doubt this time will be much different, though the potential is there for wonderful revolution/evolution.
--- End quote ---
I wouldn't call that a depressing outlook. That's why I don't like words like inertia to describe these things.
It's like saying Apple was just waiting for inertia to release their products.
Part of that is true but part of that is the optimistic outlook of "acceptance".
It's what allows every generation to create their identity and it's what allows companies to seemingly rise over monopolistic-like entities who were not as good at delivering a quality product.
If every large company was always flexible to change, they could potentially maintain a much harder to penetrate through monopoly and with that monopoly comes the convenience to reduce the quality of their products. (although this is not saying Apple is completely grassroots but that slow process is what allows for openings in the market and opportunities for lesser companies to become more well known.)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version