Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
[This is a guest post by Dan Holloway. His info is at the end of the post.]
Audience in Red by felipe trucco
The battle isn’t getting people to pay; it’s getting people to read. If they do read, they might not pay. If they don’t read, they’ll never pay.
Writers who use the “freemium” model face two distinct challenges, and the harder one isn’t always the one you think.
What a delightful piece of coincidence that I should be asked to write this blog the day before I headed off to the Reading Festival. My wife and I were going for the headline set by the most important band of the 1990s, Radiohead (sorry, Kurt), who propelled the issue of providing content for free into the public consciousness (sorry, Trent) when they released their album In Rainbows on a set-your-own-price basis; 60% of people chose, in the event, to pay nothing.
A delightful coincidence, but not actually that significant. Radiohead are still the most important band in the world; Trent Reznor is one of the most important figures in [re]shaping the music industry; Stephen King is about the most long-term successful writer on the planet. And Chris Anderson is, well, Chris Anderson. But these are the names that come up again and again in the freemium debate – “look how great they are; see what they did!” on the one hand; “it wasn’t a success, it was a disaster; and the free wasn’t properly free!” on the other.
I want to make two points. First, the exploits of established megastars have nothing to do with the relevance of the freemium debate to new writers. Second, they actually skew the debate rather dangerously, because they focus attention on the wrong challenge, not the one that’s most important to new writers.
New writers who want to make a living (or to supplement their living) through their writing need readers who will pay for their work. They always have done and always will. What the freemium model does is claim new writers can get readers by providing content for free, and that enough of those readers will buy their content in alternative formats, or with added extras, to provide them with an income.
For the average newbie writer (or musician*), what matters most is getting any audience at all. So I want to come back to the first point, but I want start by exposing a couple of bits of faulty logic in typical objections to the second point.
1. “People won’t pay writers for enhanced content or merchandise.” Wrong. Only a week or so I came across a wonderful piece of merchandise on the website of author partnership Deberry and Grant, a bag that is featured in one of their books. I wasn’t one of their readers (I came across them during a chat on Twitter), but I wanted one. If I was already a fan, it would be essential. Simple, but effective.
2. “60% of people downloaded In Rainbows for free; not enough people paid for Stephen King’s set your own price book to justify him continuing the experiment.” Plain irrelevant for the average writer; these uberstars are qualitatively different beasts. The audience’s attitude towards remunerating them, and the amount of remuneration required, just don’t apply. What we need is evidence from newbies who use this approach – which is one reason I intend to keep a regular and public record of the figures for Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, the book I launched on September 1st, as a free download and a £7.98 paperback that includes bonus material, including a paper I gave on the themes of the book at a recent conference; an annotated history of the book’s various opening chapters; and, for people who order the book direct from me, a poster from the rock gig that features in the book’s second chapter.
I don’t need enough people to buy my book to make me a millionaire; I want eventually to build a fanbase of 1,000 true fans. That’ll do.
For me, as for the majority of people with a great cultural product looking to break into the market, that means what matters most is getting exposure. For many of us, going through the traditional channels just isn’t an option; I write gentle, thought-provoking literary fiction that will never sell more than a few thousand copies. I don’t make financial sense for publishers.
The battle isn’t getting people to pay; it’s getting people to read. If they do read, they might not pay. If they don’t read, they’ll never pay. That’s the simple logic that explains why so many of us struggling writers and musicians display exasperation and disbelief at the animosity shown towards freemium by so many who already have an audience.
“Free” is a hugely powerful way to get people who wouldn’t try if they had to buy, to take a look; it’s the essential foundation of a writer’s platform. I firmly believe that if people read my work they’ll think it’s every bit as good as what they’d find in the shops. It’s just getting them to spend five minutes of their time to read it.
The real question is how to expose people to our free material?
These problems – lack of visibility and the stigma that “free” means “worthless” – were the reason I set up the Free-e-day festival, a one day (December 1st) celebration of indie culture, where anyone (writers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists) can offer something as a free electronic download for a day, and where audiences can spend a day in one place trying out the vast wealth of talent they couldn’t find in the mainstream. Or through bittorrent.
The festival isn’t a list or a directory, it’s a carnival. And a workshop; there will be all kinds of webchats and online advice seminars on the day to help creative people working outside the mainstream, from the ins and outs of Creative Commons to website design. Every participant gets a page of the e-brochure to do with as they please, and a listing and link on our site, in return for the promise to make something available to readers for free on December 1st.
I believe passionately in the freemium model. But as new writers, we need to not let the debates distract us. We should stop worrying about how to get paid for our premium offering, and start thinking about how to use free to get heard.
*NOTE: I really don’t want to go into the shambles the UK government has made with proposed anti-file-sharing legislation, but I’ll say for the record that as a content producer struggling for an audience, I don’t want any boundaries put up between me and my audience. It’s something authors don’t talk about much, but I’ve yet to meet a musician who disagrees.
Dan Holloway is co-founder of the Year Zero Writers collective, and organiser of the Free-e-day Festival. His novel, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, the story of a teenage girl growing up in post-communist Hungary, was a number one book in 2008 on writers’ sites Youwriteon and Authonomy, and is now available as a free download in all e-formats, and as a paperback for £7.98. He is also on Twitter: @agnieszkasshoes.
About Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez works in publishing by day, world domination by night. Over the years he’s lived in Staten Island and South Beach Miami; served in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, US Army, and Dennis Kucinich’s ‘04 Presidential Campaign; won poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and self-published another; prefers Pumpkin and India Pale Ales, Buffalo Trace and Four Roses Bourbons, and Dona Paula Shiraz Malbec. He’s a devout Mets fan from the Bronx now living in New Jersey, and has a beautiful wife and two amazing kids.
40 Responses to Freemium for writers is two debates
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I think you're right.
Of course, as these bottom-up portals become burdened by a constant stream of stuff, the question will then once again become—how do you make yourself special? Quality, as always, isn't necessarily sufficient to get noticed. How to make sure even the thoughtful layman reviewer gives you a chance?
[...] this page was mentioned by Guy L. Gonzalez (@glecharles), Moisés Cabello (@moises_cabello), Fran Ontanaya (@franontanaya), Chuck Wendig (@chuckwendig), Chuck Wendig (@chuckwendig) and others. [...]
I got a kick out of you mentioning “Predictably Irrational” because I'm currently reading it and that's partly why I wrote that post!
There is, of course, no substitute for persistence — but it won't necessarily pay the rent, either.
>>>90% of “branding” in a people business is just about being an honourable human being.
Heh. Have you caught Shark Tank on ABC? In episode 3, the head of FUBU turns to the other sharks and says, “See? The brand begins with the *person*.”
Heh heh! I'm based over in teh UK, so I miss out on all the best TV!
“How to get by by plodding along”
…
I don't remember telling you the title for my next release…!
But seriously: one thing I really hate about a lot of sites dedicated to indie writers is the notion that there is such thing as an answer. I would personally recommend “free”, if only to build an audience where there wasn't one before… but promises of anything more is bordering on fraud.
Sometime before the end of the year, I hope to catalogue my experiments in an easy-to-read way, so people can see the ups and downs. But really, the most useful thing I think I do is reply to a few hundred emails a day, chatting with readers about totally unrelated topics. It's slow and painful, but it helps more than anything.
I went on a tangent there. Sorry.
Regarding your first point: One thing I try with my books is the notion of getting rid of a “purchase price”. If you want to read the eBook, you can get it for free, or donate some amount that you're comfortable with. I don't believe in restricting people's ability to read my stuff just because they don't have money. I've been there. I know what that's like. It puts you in a position of having to decide between saying “no thanks”, or “pirating” it. It's a crappy moral dilemma to saddle a reader with.
In a previous life I was all about modelling systems and figuring out how process works. The… erm… “promotion of quality” in fiction (esp. on the web) is one of the trickiest things to crack. Ideally, you want to distribute your bottom-level, so there's no slushpile so much as a series of niche pools that specialists search for gems. Once they promote them, it moves up a level, and then another level after that, until it reaches the point where a “superstar reviewer” takes a look. The trouble, of course, can be seen in sites like Authonomy and Digg, where gaming the system beats all else.
If I still had my modelling software, I'd break it out for you. We could solve all the world's problems by Tuesday!
Sigh.
You've probably seen it already, but Cory Doctorow is trying a new method too (not so much “new” as an interesting mix of old), called With A Little Help (http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/09/co…)
A big part of me would love to ditch everything I've built thus far, and just start fresh from the ground up, using new methodologies. I'm unfortunately coming to the point where I can draw a few thousand readers to a new book just by announcing it, which means I'm not as good a guinea pig as I once was.
That sounds strange now that I say it.
Well, either way… there are so many cool business models I want to try… we really should make a catalogue of them all, so everyone can see what worked and didn't. Add your own ideas, see if anyone's brave enough to try. That sort of thing.
That's exactly what I'd like to see. A great bi writing-marketing wiki
Excellent thoughts Chris. I agree with Dan that in the end editorial bias is probably useful to the consumer/reader. It is an interesting parallel between a publisher screening unpublished material and a review site screening available material. The main difference is of course with portal and review sites, the stories are out there, no matter whether anyone likes them.
I'd like to think that in the future, bottom-up readers will find gems and promote them. With so much out there though, I have to envision that most often that will not be the case. What it does is that in order to make yourself relevant to potential readers and portals, writers will need to be their own “brand” more than ever.
I wonder if “brand” is becoming the new “voice”. You've put your finger on a key point, though – now, at least, the book is there to be discovered. It only takes one cursory glance from the right person. If the trusted portals and the people who feed them do their job, it isn't impossible – I have a feeling the online community is better at trawling everything and giving it a chance in the hope of finding something new than many traditional publishers. And the reason goes back to one of Guy's keywords – community. In particular it's about gossip – we love gossip, and we love to be there at the start, sharing the buzz of something new within a vast community, and that's a pretty big motivator.
@MCM – the only reason I haven't replied to each of your points is that I agree with pretty much everything, and don't think there's much to add.
I hope voice gets its fair shot. I think your points about bottom up are well taken, I think my skepticism comes from the sheer volume. It does only take one person. But if there's so much stuff out there, then perhaps there will be so much good stuff, so much to the point that it becomes brand, luck, and connections that dictate even virtual success. And everyone who loves the democratic nature of creativity in the 21st century doesn't want that to happen.
I want the things I hear about to come from passionate communities. I think the community will be, as you said, the real foundation to keep things in the direction that will benefit artists and patrons alike.
You're right – theer are only so many person-reading-hours in the world (although by enthusing people about reading and by increasing the number of people with access to culture we can do something about that [but it's not, as I believe the jargonites call it, "scalable"]), and there will be more things from which to choose how to spend them. The pessimist in me thniks our individual voices will get as lost as they are now. The optimist thinks that means more people will get to read more good stuff, and crowds of enthusiasts will push the great stuff to the top. Only time will tell, of course.
What all of us looking up and hoping CAN do, of course, is make a resolution that if we ever do get in the position where our voices are heard, we use them to find and promote great new writing.
It could be like a kind of ten years' time party – we all sign up for a get together in 10 years' time to se where we are, and hold the chosen few to account. Better still. All us wannabes and newbies make a pledge, here and now, that whether we make it or not, we will give an hour a week, 40 weeks a year, to scouring the web for new talent, and list the results – one find a week – in a single place, and wherever we go in our careers, however big some of us get, we keep on doing it. That way all us who say now that we're not huge that we care, can make good on our word, and as and if our fame grows, so will the benefit to the new writers we recommend. I'm sure that's not a new idea, but what about it? I'm happy to attach it to the Free-e-day site. Or (er, major hijack alert) Guy might want to host it here. Or we could start a blogger for it. Anyone want in?
Guy, I'm thinking about “If they don’t read, they’ll never pay” because this is contrary to the way most media purchases are marketed. Although, book publishers have “sampled” writing for decades.
The typical paid media model reflects why Cohn started Columbia Pictures. He left the rag business (where he struggled to collect receivables) to start a studio BECAUSE he observed people paying for a movie ticket IN ADVANCE, with no returns if not satisfied. This model still works: you pay your cable bill in advance based on the belief that you WILL find satisfaction. The cable segment is the healthiest in revs and profits in the media industry today.
But I do think that the book market has engaged prospective readers in the process to prime them to buy the book for a long time. (I'm thinking about book excerpts in magazines.) The key is that the “free” sample must be designed as an appetizer to make someone hungry for more. I imagine this takes a very specific talent.
Would publishers or writers be interested in a new sort of “agent” that packages the appetizers, finds the right readers, and follows up to convert them to purchase the full book?
Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity
http://www.comradity.com
Katherine, as I'm guilty for that phrase, may I answer?
I wrote about just this here back in May:
http://streamwriting.com/blog/?p=116
I argued that the agent will become a cross between a music manager and a plugger. I've spoken to a number of people who work in the music marketing business, because I think they'd be very good at it.
The whole point of freemium for me is for those currently on the outside, and the new model agent would have to open themselves up to the fact they're not deling with guaranteed hits AND they'd have not to exploit these newbie writers and become the agenting equivalent of vanity presses. Rather, for writers like me to want to work with them they'd have to do that. And a host of other things, but I'm very interested in exploring the model.
Can you e-mail me? songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com
Best,
Dan
Writing Roundup, September 11…
Here is a handy table of contents that will help you quickly reach the topic of your choice. Let me know if you like it this way.
The Business of Writing
Craft
Fiction
Freelancing
Platform
The Business of Writing
Freemium for Writers Is Two Debates
D…
[...] “Free”, and I don’t want to go into all the issues or start justifying “free”. I wrote a long post for one of my favourite blogs recently where you can find the [...]
[...] It would be great to have a debate, because debate is good. But most of all, this is a place to brainstorm ideas, to come away thinking “yeah, I’m going to try that”. hosted by Dan Holloway, a founder member of Year Zero Writers, and blogger on this topic. [...]
When I want to buy a book, I can go on Amazon and get a “free” view of a book’s table of contents, index, first few pages, and so forth. Then . . . my “free” peek is over, and I have to make a buy decision. That’s a good business model, whether you’re a lawyer, dentist, or author.
Why do we assume that we have to give away entire novels (ebooks) to get a fan base? Can’t we do like Amazon and give excerpts?
I think the freemium model implies that writers have no control over their futures, and can make no career plans; thus, we must toss a few free novels (gack!) at the Internet, cross our fingers, and . . . wait for the fans to come–or not.
Amazon has a freemium model that works, but I don’t see them giving away books, in any medium (I will go back and take another tour just to be sure).
400,000 clicks and “freemium” for Megan Jones’ Captive just makes me cringe. They’ll take her work, make a mashup, remove her name and all rights, then do what they want.
Professionally, I don’t see myself adhering 100% wholeheartedly to this imbalanced model.