03-19-2002, 11:08 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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Jkirvin you obviously do not earn your living as a performer. Please press a CD, write a book or paint a picture (without a producer) and tell us about it. BTW - breaking the copyright law in the US is a felony. If you are convicted, you are in the same boat as the other bad guys I mentioned.
Finally, regular folks don't follow the letter of the law. I have simply been trying to explain why the entertainment business IS. Who knows, maybe art should be free. Jason you are right, this is a no win topic although like Timothyt, I honestly cannot understand this mentality.
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03-20-2002, 12:52 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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TomB and others who think along the same lines...
In ten years when every song we have, every book we read, and every video we own is on a pay-per-use basis, you'll look back on these days and realize you should have stood up and fought for your rights as a consumer. The media machine doesn't want to sell you anything - it wants to rent it to you so it can make money again and again...all for the same content. Will the artists get rich off of this? No - only the people who control the content will.
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03-20-2002, 02:24 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 137
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by TomB
Jkirvin you obviously do not earn your living as a performer. Please press a CD, write a book or paint a picture (without a producer) and tell us about it.
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Since you asked... I have written three books, published them myself online without the assistance of an agent or publisher, and I have made money from those sales. Interestingly, I've sold those books via the honor system, meaning I intentionally give people the complete, full, uncrippled product, and people have paid for it anyway.
G'head, tell me again that all consumers are thieves if given the opportunity...
I agree with Jason. You're going to regret it when you can only rent intellectual property from people with no creative ability at all that have just managed to build an empire by placing themselves between the money and the talent, then screwing both sides.
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03-20-2002, 06:44 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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Interesting dialogue. First of all, no matter what laws are passed and enforced, the pay-per view scenario will never happen. We have already seen that fail with Circuit City's DivX disks. If no one buys the product the sellers will either adjust their approach or go bankrupt.
Jeff, I went to your site and looked around. We have been talking apples to oranges in terms of scope, but maybe fresh approaches like your own is what the industry needs.
I did take a look at one of your books and at 26 RTF pages (55 typeset pages in the print world I publish in) your 17,000 word-count is about 10% of the industry average for a book. Comparing your $5 price to the $20 average street price for a hardcover on a word by word basis, your asking price is about twice as much as a hardcover. I have to admit that is pretty imaginative, but if you are truly making your living from this operation, my hat is off to you.
Others aren't as lucky as you. I just tossed 9,300 unsold CDs on a run of 10,000 from a working NYC band that had over half a million downloads on MP3.com and played the main stage at the Utica NY Woodstock. Of those 700 CDs, 400 were promos. The group couldn't pay their bills and disbanded. Over 500,000 downloads = 300 $10 CDs or 10% of the band's cost of producing and promoting their work? Jeff, we should have invested our money in your publishing operation!
I am leaving this thread empty-handed. I still don't understand the "trade" mentality or how one gets around it to offer a quality product and get paid WITHOUT the insane copyright crush we have been discussing. I really wish there was a solution but according to analyst David Card, the sad answer may be there is none. Card spoke at today's Jupiter Media Forum in NYC saying "seventy percent of online adults surveyed by Jupiter can't understand why anyone would pay for any online content." That isn't good for anyone but ironically affects Jason the most! The story appears on today's Wired site:
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,51146,00.html
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03-20-2002, 04:01 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 137
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by TomB
Interesting dialogue. First of all, no matter what laws are passed and enforced, the pay-per view scenario will never happen. We have already seen that fail with Circuit City's DivX disks. If no one buys the product the sellers will either adjust their approach or go bankrupt.
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That only works in a free market when consumers have alternatives. If everyone is required to use DRM by law, consumers have to suck it up and deal with it, or simply do without.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by TomB
Jeff, I went to your site and looked around. We have been talking apples to oranges in terms of scope, but maybe fresh approaches like your own is what the industry needs.
I did take a look at one of your books and at 26 RTF pages (55 typeset pages in the print world I publish in) your 17,000 word-count is about 10% of the industry average for a book. Comparing your $5 price to the $20 average street price for a hardcover on a word by word basis, your asking price is about twice as much as a hardcover. I have to admit that is pretty imaginative, but if you are truly making your living from this operation, my hat is off to you.
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Two points you neglected to mention, Tom:
1. You picked the novella. In today's publishing climate, it's nearly impossible to publish a novella at all in paper. It's too long for magazines and too short for a book of its own. I also have a 30,000 word non-fiction book (Writing On Your Palm) and an 80,000 word novel (Between Heaven and Hell). 80k is well within the range of paper published novels. $5 would be cheaper than you'd find either of these books in paperback.
2. The $5 is just a suggested price, a starting point. Because the books are sold on the honor system, there's absolutely no way to "enforce" those prices. In fact, I tell customers up front that they are welcome to adjust the price as they see fit and pay whatever they feel the book is worth. I've been paid as little as $1 for a book and as much as $20. So your breakdown of cost per page is completely irrelevant.
In the immortal words of Yoda, "you must unlearn what you have learned." Trying to sell content online using the same models as selling in the "real" world is a recipe for failure, as you've seen firsthand. That doesn't mean you can't make money online. It does mean you have to adjust your business model to the new medium and think along new lines. Trying to force a brick and mortar business onto the Internet without changes is doomed to failure.
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03-20-2002, 07:35 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 159
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Jeff no matter what your product is and how it compares to printed counterparts, the bottom line is you are earning a living on the Internet from your intellectual properties (at least 500 - 1000 paid downloads per month after PayPal and bandwidth fees). That is an incredible accomplishment - something none of the hundreds of internet-based operations I know of have been able to do in the past three years. Of course your creativity and the laws we have discussed would be superfluous if society continued to live by the code we used for 2,000 years prior to the Internet - Exodus 20:15.
Congratulations on your achievements - and best of luck to us all! 
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