The downward spiral of value in ebooks. Over the last week or so, I've actually seen a number of ebooks being given away for free, as the authors try I imagine to desperately get some sales, and perhaps just drum up some attention for their other works.
Maybe pirated eBooks are the alternative to publically funded libraries! A back of the fag packet calculation suggests that the amount spent by central and local governments in the UK on public libraries each year is more than enough to buy an eBook reader for every regular library user...
Interestingly, the pdf sales model seems to be working in knitting design right now - there are several people making a living (and many more people supplementing their income) selling their designs in the form of pdfs. Many of the people doing well started with a free pattern, either via a site like Knitty.com or via their own blog.
The average price is around $5, you can either run a cart yourself or use a site like Ravelry (which is brilliant in many different ways - the use of metadata to let people really dig through their database is excellent[1]) to sell it and I rarely see much evidence of piracy. This has been a massive change in favour of the designers because before this became popular most designers sold to magazines who pay them a fixed amount per design. And this amount hasn't changed since the 80s, which means the real value of what they were making from them has dropped significantly in that time.
The most popular (I'm using made the most often as the metric for this) for sale design on ravelry right now is made by a woman who lives in Edinburgh, there are 8700ish versions of it made or being made and the pattern costs 3 quid. I've made that project twice, so even assuming some piracy and and some duplicates, 4000 times 3 quid is not to be sniffed at. It also isn't the only source of money for the designer, as a popular and well respected designer and blogger she gets paid to do classes too.
So digital versions doesn't have to automatically lead to piracy wrecking everything for the producers.
Classical economics would suggest that as the price falls supply falls until a new equilibrium is reached where supply equals (paying) demand. If piracy and discounting continue as implied and drive the price of new fiction down there must come a point where the price is so low that authors stop producing new works.*
I wonder what then happens to the price of new works and how the structures of supply might change. For example might authors might become paid employees of Amazon, hired to produce new works for Amazon to stream to its customers
Are there suffient works already in existence that new fiction is almost unnessary? When I draw up my list of books that I would like to read this year many of them are avaible on Kindle etc for free. I could fill a lifetime of reading with free books.
*This wouldn’t be all authors all the time. Some might authors might want the aclaim or to satisfy their own need to write. Some might be independently wealthy or retired with a pension.
If you haven't read Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto yet, please get it. The guy who made this picture famous, and created The Whole Earth Catalog, currently thinks that cities, nuclear power, and gm food are the green options for the 21st century.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
The trend is indeed towards zero.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
Heeeeeeeeee.
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
The average price is around $5, you can either run a cart yourself or use a site like Ravelry (which is brilliant in many different ways - the use of metadata to let people really dig through their database is excellent[1]) to sell it and I rarely see much evidence of piracy. This has been a massive change in favour of the designers because before this became popular most designers sold to magazines who pay them a fixed amount per design. And this amount hasn't changed since the 80s, which means the real value of what they were making from them has dropped significantly in that time.
The most popular (I'm using made the most often as the metric for this) for sale design on ravelry right now is made by a woman who lives in Edinburgh, there are 8700ish versions of it made or being made and the pattern costs 3 quid. I've made that project twice, so even assuming some piracy and and some duplicates, 4000 times 3 quid is not to be sniffed at. It also isn't the only source of money for the designer, as a popular and well respected designer and blogger she gets paid to do classes too.
So digital versions doesn't have to automatically lead to piracy wrecking everything for the producers.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I wonder what then happens to the price of new works and how the structures of supply might change. For example might authors might become paid employees of Amazon, hired to produce new works for Amazon to stream to its customers
Are there suffient works already in existence that new fiction is almost unnessary? When I draw up my list of books that I would like to read this year many of them are avaible on Kindle etc for free. I could fill a lifetime of reading with free books.
*This wouldn’t be all authors all the time. Some might authors might want the aclaim or to satisfy their own need to write. Some might be independently wealthy or retired with a pension.
re: GM food & Africa
The guy who made this picture famous, and created The Whole Earth Catalog, currently thinks that cities, nuclear power, and gm food are the green options for the 21st century.
Re: GM food & Africa