I imagine the market will increasingly focus around the big sellers, the ones the supermarkets carry at discounted rates. And the rise of the gentleman-of-leisure author, the ones who can afford to write and not have to worry about sales.
And we'll probably see more of the Tom Clancy Presents style book, where they sell the work of other writers under a Big Name, and create Established Brands, in much the same way Hollywood is now locked into making remakes and sequels to established brands.
Until or unless writers can start doing gigs, and selling merchandise, they just can't survive books going down the path music has been going down the last 10 years.
Because no, I can't see a positive outlook either. Too many people are too used and comfortable with the idea of getting stuff for free on the internet, and they no longer see anything at all wrong with it.
I saw a horrifying tweet from an author a few months ago, where he said he was eating ramen noodles again because his book had sold 18 copies that week, and on pirate bay, he could see that 800 people had downloaded it that very day. He was, needless to say, not a happy chap.
I suspect the numbers I'm after are somewhere out there on the intersphere, but I wonder how many of those alleged 800 have even looked at the first page (yet)?
Back when I paid attention to the war3z types, the mentality was all about quantity, rather than actually using whichever 0-day copy of Delphi/Potatoshop. Similarly, one could go poking about other people's computers on the Napster/Soulseek and see piles of stuff that no rational person would want to listen to. It wasn't that whatever pop group were any good, it was all in the having. Like a mob of toddlers with bandwidth.
True, good point. I can imagine quite a few people downloading huge numbers of books to create libraries that they'll never read.
I've had friends with immense music libraries they've downloaded, and looking through the numbers of times they'd played stuff, thousands of song they'd never even listened to.
Well, not that strange given the intersection of spod and record-collector.
There was a lot more going outside and speaking to people involved when one had to beetle off to record fairs on the hunt for Joy Division bootlegs, obscure On-U releases and 'A guy called Gerald' 12-inchers.
These days, one can just sit on one's arse and roundly curse gormless American teens for not getting the metadata right. (It's not a bloody Depeche Mode rarity, it's a Canadian DJ doing a remix, etc.)
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And we'll probably see more of the Tom Clancy Presents style book, where they sell the work of other writers under a Big Name, and create Established Brands, in much the same way Hollywood is now locked into making remakes and sequels to established brands.
Until or unless writers can start doing gigs, and selling merchandise, they just can't survive books going down the path music has been going down the last 10 years.
Because no, I can't see a positive outlook either. Too many people are too used and comfortable with the idea of getting stuff for free on the internet, and they no longer see anything at all wrong with it.
I saw a horrifying tweet from an author a few months ago, where he said he was eating ramen noodles again because his book had sold 18 copies that week, and on pirate bay, he could see that 800 people had downloaded it that very day. He was, needless to say, not a happy chap.
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I think. Maybe.
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I've had friends with immense music libraries they've downloaded, and looking through the numbers of times they'd played stuff, thousands of song they'd never even listened to.
Strange collector impulse at work.
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There was a lot more going outside and speaking to people involved when one had to beetle off to record fairs on the hunt for Joy Division bootlegs, obscure On-U releases and 'A guy called Gerald' 12-inchers.
These days, one can just sit on one's arse and roundly curse gormless American teens for not getting the metadata right. (It's not a bloody Depeche Mode rarity, it's a Canadian DJ doing a remix, etc.)