And if .txt is de rigeur, sell nicely formatted PDFs. If PDFs are commonplace, sell ePub.
The game book I'm editing/developing at the moment, we chucked on a filesharing site as advertising. One thousand downloads, hundreds more pageviews. When we have a physical product with art, support material and access to the author, there's going to be some extra sales because of that.
Physical versions less so, but the question is whether there's a market for physical versions in 5 years. I don't believe there is for music, TV or movies, and there's a great big question-mark over books.
How many box sets do you have, though? Right now, they make sense, just about.
We've had this conversation a few times, and ultimately I can't see how you can effectively subsidise creative industries for very long. It's only ever going to be a short-term fix, and the marketplace is changing a lot.
So be agile. If you can produce something rare and charge for it, or produce something common that has stuff nearby that's rare, then that plan makes sense to me. In Brazil, music is pirated, and the bands make money from tours. They apparently *expect* piracy and use it as a promotional tool.
PDFs etc are of course copiable, but if they're more special for a little while, they'll make a little money.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
Re: Fighting with teenagers
The game book I'm editing/developing at the moment, we chucked on a filesharing site as advertising. One thousand downloads, hundreds more pageviews. When we have a physical product with art, support material and access to the author, there's going to be some extra sales because of that.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
Physical versions less so, but the question is whether there's a market for physical versions in 5 years. I don't believe there is for music, TV or movies, and there's a great big question-mark over books.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
We've had this conversation a few times, and ultimately I can't see how you can effectively subsidise creative industries for very long. It's only ever going to be a short-term fix, and the marketplace is changing a lot.
So be agile. If you can produce something rare and charge for it, or produce something common that has stuff nearby that's rare, then that plan makes sense to me. In Brazil, music is pirated, and the bands make money from tours. They apparently *expect* piracy and use it as a promotional tool.
PDFs etc are of course copiable, but if they're more special for a little while, they'll make a little money.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
I got the box set for Mad Men seasons 1 and 2, but then season 3 was on "live" in the US, so I just downloaded it.
Of course, I happily buy into the Spotify model, but Virgin's VOD is still tiny compared to how much stuff is out there.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
I downloaded all those seasons. And I'd have loved a service where I could have downloaded more easily. I did pay for a monthly Rapidshare account.
Re: Fighting with teenagers
Re: Fighting with teenagers
That's fine for the healthy, naturally didactic extrovert author without a family who writes material that reads well.
>Sell special editions
Yeah, I'm wondering whether we'll have a return to the illustrated pulps, complete with schematics and maps.