The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next) • Hacker News Board

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#71

Post by chc » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 6:01 PM UTC

forensic wrote: post #58

DennisP wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King did exactly that, though he screwed up the incentive. He released a new book one chapter at a time, allowing each chapter to be freely distributed. He charged a dollar for each chapter download, but it was optional. He asked only that 75% of downloaders pay a dollar. Where he screwed up: he promised to finish the book if his targets were met for the first two chapters. Naturally, for the first two chapte…

Wikipedia says he broke his promise because he "ran out of stories" not due to payment

It seems unlikely that he would have "run out of stories" if people were still paying him to come up with more. I mean, he's been coming up with stories for decades and he runs out just then?

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#72

Post by chc » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #23

maguay wrote: post #9

There's another way to look at it. eBooks sales, whether in Kindle, iBooks, or another marketplace, end up with similar dynamics to the App Store in iOS. People have paid $0.99-$4.99 millions of times over for apps such as Angry Birds that would have sold far fewer copies as a $19.99 boxed PC or game console game. I think eBook readers actually encourage buying books, and for the vast majority of the public, it's so…

The (hypothesized--I think it was Tim O'Reilly who has written about this) issue though is that, with books, time is much more of a limiting factor with books than with songs or simple iThing games. Even if an author makes substantially more per copy with an eBook, there's a limit in how many more copies they'll sell even at a much lower price; people only have time to read so many more books. I'm not arguing it's al…

This is anecdotal, but my experience is that the limiting factor for most readers is just having a book to read. If I have a book with me that I really want to read, time magically appears to read it — books fit very well into those little gaps that are otherwise wasted. But I don't have time to think about reading, so if I don't have that book with me, I'm not going to look for one. The easy availability combined with guilt-free impulse-buy prices on ebooks solves that.

Extra anecdote: My girlfriend has always been an avid reader, but since she got a Nook, I'd estimate her book purchases have doubled because she can just buy a book at midnight while she's sitting in bed or when she's stuck home sick or on her lunch break.

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#73

Post by Charuru » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 6:53 PM UTC

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #5

> The role of piracy. I think we know. And the trends are negative, for both readers and authors. Except that the role of piracy is anything but clearcut. As Tim O'Reilly famously said in 2002 [1]: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." Again and again over the past several years, we have seen both studies and anecdotal stories from artists finding that file sharing produced…

Except that the role of piracy is anything but clearcut. As Tim O'Reilly famously said in 2002 [1]: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." False dichotomy much? I'm now an avowed ebook pirate, and my ebook library has ballooned seriously over the past 3 years. But I'm reading less than I did 5 years ago, when I used to frequent bookstores.

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#74

Post by bad_user » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 7:01 PM UTC

loewenskind wrote: post #62

_delirium wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it has to do with digital or non-digital. It has to do with the fact that people like forming bands, making music, writing poetry, etc. They like it so much that many of them---even people who are good at it---would be willing to do it even if they didn't make any money at it. Hence, it's hard to charge a high price for labor that people are willingly oversupplying. Contrast with waiting tables, where p…

>Hence, it's hard to charge a high price for labor that people are willingly oversupplying. Not strictly true. Thanks to digital camera availability there are a near infinite amount of people willing to do your family portrait but I suspect you'll have no issue with paying to have it done. >Contrast with waiting tables, where people do not enjoy doing it enough to do it for free. If there were a lot of people who lov…

Oh great, so the future of authors and their revenue lies now in the jobs that haven't been automated yet?

There used to be a time when taking an ID photo would require you to go to a specialized photo studio, you know.

Waiting tables might still have a future though, since those robots from Japan are kind of creepy (for now at least).

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#75

Post by mitcheme » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 11:08 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #22

greyman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I wanted to say something else. Many people how don't know about BitTorrent would still not pay.

"Many people how don't know about BitTorrent would still not pay." And some would. So where does that leave the overall argument?

It leaves that "it isn't several hundreds of dollars, since many people who are downloading from PirateBay would not buy the songs even if the free option wouldn't be available." The average person who casually downloads a huge torrent with hundreds of songs would not realistically download all of those songs if they paid $1 each for them. That's not a matter of personality but basic economics -- there's far more demand for a song when the "price" is $0 than when it's $1. For $0, many people will download a given song even if they have no real intention of listening to it, simply because the interface to delete lots of files from your computer is easier than the one to exclude lots of individual items from a torrent download. And hey, you can listen to one or two of them for 15 seconds each, maybe you'll find a new song that you like. The first benefit goes away when you're sticking individual songs in your cart, and the second is not worth very much money at all. Take the option of torrenting away and those people would download only a few of those songs for a much more reasonable amount of money.

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#76

Post by loewenskind » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 9:20 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #74

loewenskind wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hence, it's hard to charge a high price for labor that people are willingly oversupplying. Not strictly true. Thanks to digital camera availability there are a near infinite amount of people willing to do your family portrait but I suspect you'll have no issue with paying to have it done. >Contrast with waiting tables, where people do not enjoy doing it enough to do it for free. If there were a lot of people who lov…

Oh great, so the future of authors and their revenue lies now in the jobs that haven't been automated yet? There used to be a time when taking an ID photo would require you to go to a specialized photo studio, you know. Waiting tables might still have a future though, since those robots from Japan are kind of creepy (for now at least).

What are you talking about? I'm not saying to keep jobs around that make no sense to be done (e.g. having a guy stand at each of a construction site holding a sign to direct traffic). I'm saying that things that still have to be done shouldn't all become free if they are tasks that people like to do.

Don't people always say to find something you love to do and then find a way to get paid to do it? I don't want a world where there is no way to get paid to do it unless nothing costs anything.

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#77

Post by maguay » Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

oiujyhgtfrt wrote: post #67

forensic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the invention of e-books and digital audiobooks I probably buy 3-10 times more of these. Audiobooks in particular, of the on-demand variety where I can instantly get them on my iPhone through the Audible app, have led to me reading a HELL of a lot more. It's easy and convenient. eBooks also help because I buy more books and search through them. I can also read them on mobile devices while I take a shit in publi…

The problem at the moment is that the publishers are marketing eBooks as a new luxury product to a niche of rich techies who but iPads on a whim. SO an eBook costs the same as the hardback - screwing you. But the contract with the author has the same clauses charging them a percentage of buy-backs and printing faults or damaged copies as the paper version - screwing them. The publishers need to realize the game has c…

True ... which is exactly why I think it's publishers, not authors, that stand to lose the most from this. When smart authors start selling eBooks cheaper directly on Kindle et al., that's when the real book transition will start.

At the very least, there's a huge potential for a lucrative new market in cheaper eBooks, only it hasn't been fully realized yet because of existing publishers.

Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)

#78

Post by conjectures » Thu, Jan 27, 2011, 11:23 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #36

lionhearted wrote: post #25

I think we'll see more serialized, short length, low price point works. Will someone pay 99 cents for 20-30 pages of a well-crafted story? I think probably yes. I'm thinking of something like "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" - obviously Yudkowsky can't sell that because of its fanfiction nature, but something of that quality level, I think I'd pay a buck to read 4-5 episodes of it. Especially if I got ho…

Stephen King did exactly that, though he screwed up the incentive. He released a new book one chapter at a time, allowing each chapter to be freely distributed. He charged a dollar for each chapter download, but it was optional. He asked only that 75% of downloaders pay a dollar. Where he screwed up: he promised to finish the book if his targets were met for the first two chapters. Naturally, for the first two chapte…

that's a case study to keep hold of.