Some of you have probably read this New York Times article, where David Pogue hand-wrings over releasing his works in electronic format, on the current ease in which people can pirate said electronic works, and offers a couple of examples of “there really seems to be no way beside the current 19th-century publishing model to monetize my works fairly.”
The article is perhaps a little unsettling to any author who intends to try to make a living through the advance- and- royalties model of the publishing industry. But what is more interesting is some of the commentary.
In particular:
Your thoughts are interesting but they miss a bigger point in our history. Technology is changing the way wealth is distributed. I have no doubt that Mr. Pogue has a mortgage. I highly doubt that it is small. What I hear in this post is him asking the question how am I going to maintain the lifestyle I think I deserve, not how am I going to feed my children.
Or:
Well, sorry, Mr. Pogue, I sure hope your kids will finish college soon and the mortgage repaid, because: Your business model is dying. Fast.
And, you know, our commenters have a point. When Mr. Pogue hand-wrings about revenue lost to piracy, he uses his mortgage and his kids’ college bills to justify his income stream. He doesn’t talk about the value of his work, or the time he put into it, but instead resorts to a petty and rather petulant sense of entitlement. “I worked hard to get here! I deserve this moolah!”
Well, who says?
Who says anyone has any right to any kind of revenue multiplication scheme?
I suspect we will look back on our era, say, in 30 years or so, and shake our heads at the music artists who made it big through record sales, or the authors who got big book deals, or the ludicrous rates paid to top film stars. Because we are moving out of this strange cul-de-sac in history where production and distribution of creative work–of any kind–can be strictly controlled. There’s nothing any publisher, studio, or organization can do about it. Either they provide creative content so inexpensively and conveniently that it’s stupid to pirate the content, or they will go by the wayside.
And yet, we have people like David raging against this inevitable shift. Which brings me to the central failure of any established system: its extreme need to protect itself. David wants to protect his mortgage, his kids, his lifestyle. The system wants to protect its profits, which, at this point in time, it equates to its monopoly on distribution.
And, no matter where you look, that’s the way it works. Young people enter the workforce and want to turn the company upside down with their brilliance, and work 14-hour days to prove themselves . . . until they have their C-level position, and then it’s time to play golf and justify the time off as a well-deserved breather. Corporations love to talk about the power of the free market, and the value of competition . . . that is, until they have a market base, and then it’s time to seek market protection and talk about themselves being a pillar of the economy.
But things are changing, and changing fast. Does anyone really think they can sit back and say, “My contributions to date earn me the right to keep my lifestyle?” Perhaps some. But I think they are severely delusional. And in for a big wake-up call.
The people who will do well are the ones who can change on the fly. Who can see opportunity and take it. Who aren’t afraid of stepping into a whole new world.
Because with change comes opportunity. And that makes me happy.
June 10th, 2008 /
June 10th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
While I agree with most of what you say (essentially advancing a “life is not fair and why should it be?” argument–if I understand you correctly), I wonder how your assertions apply to us as we get too old to work?
Changing on the fly is all well and good when we’re still young.
Thoughts?
June 10th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
[...] - The Failure of Established Systems “There’s nothing any publisher, studio, or organization can do about it. Either they [...]
June 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Jeremy: It’s not about life being fair or unfair. It’s about people using silly, petulant excuses like “I haz a mortgage!” to justify their income.
It’s about revenue multiplication schemes are going by the wayside as a model, because publishers, music labels, and studios will not be able to control the production and distribution of content. And we have not yet worked out an attention-based, advertising-supported model to replace it (though many people are working on it).
And it’s about change, and always being willing to change. Our model of “you gots a few good years, then you sit on the porch, then you die” model is a fable propagated by media. If we want to advance, we have to change constantly, throughout life, and challenge ourselves to go further.
Bottom line: If you don’t want to change, expect to publish some whiny screeds about how you deserve your lifestyle, shortly before the repo men show up. If you want to change, there are limitless possibilities to help build the future. And do well while doing so.
Those are my thoughts.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Jason: thanks for allowing me to play devil’s advocate. Your points are well said and well received.
I’ve enjoyed reading your archives, and it’s clear you have a lot of good ideas on how to improve the state of publishing. Perhaps you could write a couple of entries specifically for authors, and what they can do to: A) have their books read by the largest percentage of their potential audience as possible, and B) make a living doing so.
I’ve attempted to write two or three such posts myself, but deleted them after discovering big holes in my logic. Bottom line, I agree with you that the need to change and leverage opportunity is (or should be) obvious to publishers and authors (labels / musicians / etc.), but *what* precisely we should be doing differently isn’t so obvious, at least to me. Maybe you could shed some more light? Thanks.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I’d take an even larger step back and say that the resources which we worry so much about (food, shelter, education, tools/supplies that we use to do our work, health care) are to some degree or another based on false economies. If say, health care was no longer an issue/concern I think a lot of, particularly creative, people would feel less beholden to corporate-type jobs. If we didn’t have to pay to make the whole foods/walmart stockholders rich, and so forth. And these false economies are insidiously self-propagating, and make it incredibly hard to switch gears midstream.
This might be the reason why change is so slow coming. Just maybe.