New Media Archives | Page 14 of 18

Freemium for writers is two debates

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:September 3, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:35 Comments

[This is a guest post by Dan Holloway. His info is at the end of the post.]

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.

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You are not your iPhone, not your Kindle

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:August 11, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:11 Comments

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.”
—Max Frisch

That an author needs to establish their own marketing platform nowadays has pretty much become a given, but I’ve seen many complaints about how difficult and time-consuming it is, and of course there’s the predictable flood of marketing gurus pushing all kinds of technology-enabled solutions to make things “easier”.

Some are well-intentioned and worthy of consideration, like the next-generation “social publisher”, Cursor, and the new, marketing-centric Writer’s Digest Conference. Others are just quick cash-grabs, like the brazenly opportunistic Twitter Boot Camp and 140 Characters Conference, my favorite description of which came from Loren Feldman: “biggest circle jerk of nothingness“. (NSFW!)

As Twitter’s still feeling the effects of last week’s crash, and Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed have shown, focusing on specific tools is the wrong approach, and limiting your platform development to your online presence is a recipe for disaster.

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Is Social Publishing simply Vanity Publishing 2.0?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 30, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:20 Comments

“Yes, Sir, there are many happy people here. There are many people here who are watching hundreds, and who think hundreds are watching them.”

Samuel Johnson, Quotes on Vanity

“Digital publishing”, “ePublishing” and “social publishing” are the buzzwords du jour; Web 2.0 business models based on the idea that eBooks are the next big thing and social media platforms and tools are the best way to sell them.

There’s seemingly a new “publisher” putting up a digital shingle every day, and while the description and details vary somewhat among them, the usual common denominators are a savvy marketer’s dream combination of truth, opinion, hype, and a dash of old-fashioned “snake oil” opportunism:

Print is dead.
The distribution system is broken.
eBooks are teh future.
Social media has made us all publishers and journalists.
Writers will do anything to get published.

That last point typically represents the digital start-ups’ primary source of income, monetizing a community of aspiring writers by selling their work back into the community, or by offering them fee-based services that allow them to do it themselves. In their ideal scenario, they double-dip.

While generally offering legitimate contracts and something resembling a distribution and marketing program — the latter of which will still fall primarily in the author’s lap — there’s a vague whiff of old-school vanity underlying the whole thing that’s bothered me from the beginning.

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Keep it Simple, Stupid

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 21, 2009
Post category:Media Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice. The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice. "The Longing", by David Weinberger, from The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual My wife and I celebrated our 11th anniversary this past weekend with a little family getaway to Lancaster County, PA, and had the wonderful kind of physically exhausting, mentally stimulating time that…

Platform 201 for Busy Writers: 1,000 True Fans

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 14, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:8 Comments

Mets Fan at Shea Stadium (Queens, New York) by Luke Redmond

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
—Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans

The “1,000 True Fans” theory states, effectively, that 1,000 literal fanatics each spending $100/year on your stuff is all you need for a sustainable career. It’s a model for which Trent Reznor is often used as an example, and much like the discredited “Long Tail Theory” it’s based on (Kelly and Chris Anderson are colleagues at Wired), it is overly simplistic and doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.

It does, however, offer a reference point for the next step in building an author’s platform.

Platform 101 was about laying the foundation, physically and virtually. Once you have your foundation in place, you will slowly begin to attract an audience, some of whom might one day become enthusiastic fans who will not only buy your books (and short stories, and CDs, and t-shirts, etc.) but, perhaps more importantly, will also mobilize and spread the word far and wide on your behalf, sometimes without your even having to ask.

Platform 201 is about attracting, engaging and energizing that community, and these are three fundamental points to keep in mind while doing so:

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Review: GROUNDSWELL, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 11, 2009
Post category:Media Reviews
Post comments:2 Comments

Solid info and insights, coupled with clear (if sometimes incomplete) case studies make GROUNDSWELL: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business School Press; 2008) ideal for the C-Suite skeptic and those trying to influence their embrace of socialization. Published last year, and working primarily from data collected in 2007, it holds up reasonably well as a “proof of concept” vehicle, and as such, is a perfect companion to Geoff Livingston’s NOW IS GONE: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs.

Basically, the “groundswell” is Water Cooler 2.0 — people using technology to share their thoughts and opinions about products and services they love and loathe — and GROUNDSWELL makes a smart, practical case for listening, tapping, embracing and empowering that groundswell for the best competitive advantage of all: a passionate customer.

Co-authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, both analysts with Forrester Research, take pains to keep things simple, writing in a style that’s one step above “Social Media for Dummies”, presenting a step-by-step strategic approach to understanding and leveraging their “groundswell” premise which wisely focuses on PEOPLE and OBJECTIVES before technology.

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Platform 101 For Busy Writers: 3 Simple Steps

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 10, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:14 Comments

“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.”
—Seth Godin

In an era of immediate gratification and information overload, patience is something few people have time for. They want “it” right now, whether “it” is an email response, a well-paying career, or the proverbial house with a white picket fence. For writers, the social web whispers promises of instant success and overnight fame if only they had a big enough following on Twitter, but the reality is, as Godin notes, very different.

I’ve realized over the past several months that there’s a tendency to oversimplify things, to assume everyone has a certain level of web and marketing savvy (not to mention free time), starting discussions about writers’ platforms, curating communities and “free vs. freemium” way too far ahead of the curve. For a lot of writers. something as seemingly simple as setting up a blog can become a huge, time-consuming effort for which the long-term value isn’t always quite clear or worthwhile.

It most certainly is worthwhile, though, so what follows is a simple 3-step model for building the foundation of your writer’s platform, no matter where you are on Godin’s theoretical timeline:

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