Is your writing worth anything?
Part I
I’ll start with where I’m coming from on this. There is part of me that is a dynamic, inspiring, super-positive, Clamber-over-Every-Obstacle entrepreneur (let’s call her CEO). There is part of me that is a traumatized, hide-because-I-am-worthless, Cringing, Over-awed Wall-flower and Depressive (COWD). The two parts war within me. Which is a huge improvement, because until relatively recently I was only the latter, at least for our purposes.
I mention this because something similar might apply to you. Because we’re all human beings, it is our psychology, and how it interacts with others’ psychology, that determines what happens in our lives. Not just personal, but financial. The global economy runs, however much we might like to imagine it is more rational and numerical than that, on human psychology. Just look at the stock market… or consider what and why you buy or don’t buy.
This is a post about the psychology of money, and how it applies to weblit. It talks about what writing is worth, and how to measure that. It talks a bit about our reputation, and the invention of the term “weblit.” It leads in to Part II, not yet written, wherein I talk monetization strategies. There is a fairly good chance that you’ll find it confronting. Read on, unless you’re strictly a hobbyist writer and don’t care whether you ever earn anything, in which case you don’t have the problem I’m trying to solve.
I started regularly posting in March 2009. I post 2-3,000 words every weekday minus holidays and vacations. I used to do 4,000, posting two books concurrently. At this point I have probably put more than a million words online. (Many of them were already written, else I could never have done it.) My readership has grown steadily, but slowly, still numbering only in the scores. I’ve made so little money in donations I’m embarrassed to give the amount.
I know I have made one fundamental error: not doing enough promotion. (Right now at least, from what I see, there’s a very simple formula: story that pulls people in + advertising in webcomics = lots of readers, story that pulls people in + no advertising in webcomics = few readers. Alexandra Erin told me to do that in 2008, and MeiLin more recently. Yet I haven’t done it.) I know I have possibly made errors in packaging, in which I am including web design, titling, initial artwork, and the first few posts, which are always a sales job for the rest, though I’ve corrected most at this point. I also know that (horrors) COWD shows up in my writing, to some degree, though not as much as before.
I know exactly why I am making these errors: it’s the influence of COWD, who wants to conceal everything I do, and is devious in finding ways. “Oh, a few readers, a daily routine, a nice comfy little rut to stay in—perfect!” she’s thinking. She is terrified to have hundreds of thousands of readers; she dreads the mass exposure. Meanwhile CEO, who also thinks in terms of efficiency of time and labour spent, is ripping out the hair on her half of my head.
(If you wonder how the heck I ever managed to publish in the dead-tree world twenty years ago despite all this insecurity… let’s just say, I knew someone. And in the dead-tree world, other people take over the packaging aspect as soon as you sell the manuscript, so I wasn’t in a position to sabotage it. It got messed up anyway, too long a story to tell here.)
CEO is winning, slowly. Two years ago, I’d get the shits (literally) just from writing asa kraiya, never mind posting it. The website upgrade was done back in February (Yay MeiLin!), and I have actually succeeded in writing blurbs, designing ads, collecting testimonials, etc. All good stuff.
But it’s been occurring to me for a while that I am perhaps making a much larger, overriding, fundamental error… and in fact maybe we all are, at least those of us who exclusively use the donation/advertising model of revenue-earning, as I do (though that will soon change).
The theory is that by offering something for free, you attract people. This is based on the rational view that we are taught in micro-economics: the higher the price you set on a widget, the fewer widgets you’ll sell, therefore, if you offer your widgets free, everyone will grab one. But anyone in marketing knows that this is actually not true, or at least too simplistic. What is more precisely true is that is that people will pay for perceived value.
I was first made aware of this by the experience of a friend of mine who is an artist and photographer. She did up some beautiful greeting cards with artsy photographs, all of them one-of-a-kind, and put them out for sale for $1.25 each at a craft show. No one touched them. She was baffled. Such nice cards for such a good price, great deal—why wasn’t anyone taking it? After the first day of the show, she asked a friend who is a marketing professional what might have gone wrong.
His advice? “Double the price.” She did, the next day of the show. They sold like hotcakes.
Why? Because people have a certain perception of how much a product is worth. If you price well above that perception, they’ll feel you’re screwing them and not buy. But if you charge well below that, they’ll also feel you’re screwing them and not buy, because they’ll feel that if you are charging so low, there must be something wrong with the product—even something as straightforward and easy to judge the attractiveness of as a greeting card.
In other words, you declare the value and attractiveness of your work not only by your packaging, advertising, etc.—but also by the price you set on it. You can’t go too high, because then you’re into the you’re-screwing-me zone—but you also can’t go too low because then you’re into the other you’re-screwing-me zone.
You get the implication, and my contention. By offering our work free, we are declaring to the world that it is worth nothing and thus we are possibly driving readers away.
I chose the donation/advertising model because other people used it before me. My first inspiration for writing online was the progressive political blogosphere, which always ran that way, and my second was Alexandra Erin. But I’ve had a sneaking worry the whole time that I’ve been posting, and have not been sure whether it was CEO worrying legitimately, or COWD just being paranoid as she is.
It goes like this: “Never mind whether people want to donate to The Philosopher in Arms when I, the writer, don’t even believe in it enough to require payment for reading. Why would they even want to go to the trouble of reading it?” Reading weblit isn’t like TV; it takes effort. It’s not like webcomics; it takes time. Readers want to know, before they expend even the slightest effort and give up their precious time, that they’re going to get something out of it. CEO, it seemed, was whispering to me, “This business model makes no sense. This business model is another self-sabotaging trick of COWD.”
COWD was whispering right back. It scares me even to write this. I started months ago, and it’s only now I have the courage to post it. What does the voice of COWD sound like? A sort of acidic destructiveness, creeping through your mind, that sours all it touches… but seems safest, as if the wrath of heaven will descend on you if you don’t listen to it. COWD is what you hear when your mother, that most key source of your own belief in yourself, has asked you till the day she died, “Why don’t you write something worthwhile?” This was so normal for me I didn’t even realize until a few years ago it was an insult to every single word I produced.
But surely, I thought, other writers aren’t self-sabotaging… that weirdness is only me since my family was extremely dysfunctional, right?
Wrong. Consider the astonishing experience of Isa, proprietor of weblit publishing-house fluffy-seme, when she began attempting to recruit writers. She describes it in a Dec. 2, 2009 post on novelr.
“Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to pay writers right now.” I explained.
“Oh, that’s all right … you don’t have to pay me.”
At first I kind of assumed this was just naiveté, and so I explained to her that yes … in fact we do have to pay you. In order for us to publish you, you have to sign a contract giving us the right to reproduce your content and to profit from said content. You should never sign away those kind of rights without some compensation. So I suggested … “How about this? I can draw up a temporary three-month contract at a low rate and then when it expires we’ll renegotiate.”
“Oh … no … really that’s okay, I really don’t feel comfortable getting paid for my work. It’s not that good.”
Negotiations actually stalled and inevitably fell apart over this unbelievable problem: she really didn’t want me to pay her for her writing.
Because to me when you’re selling something: $$ > $ and $ > free I assumed that this encounter was merely an anomaly … instead it foreshadowed the hair-pulling frustration that was to come in October [2009] when fluffy-seme opened up for submissions and went about trying to recruit writers. Nearly every single time I started negotiations with a writer discussions would come to a dead stop as soon as the fact that I actually intended to pay them became clear.
Now why you’d even talk to someone calling herself a publisher if you didn’t want to get paid is beyond me, but the truth came clear: I was not the only writer afflicted with a COWD…! Undervaluing our work, I suspect, is endemic (with exceptions, of course) and why this is surprising to me, I have no idea, because I had already learned from other sources of marketing/business wisdom that undervaluing and underpricing products or services is endemic in inexperienced businesspeople, especially women. (And a strong majority of weblit writers are women.)
We are terrified, more than anything else, of being labeled presumptuous or arrogant. This creates a terrible bind for writers in particular, because to promote yourself, you have to be presumptuous and arrogant enough to believe that the pure product of your mind is deserving of others’ time and attention.
So I re-examined my rationale. The progressive political blogosphere, I realized, was perhaps not the best example to follow, because it’s seen less as a business than a cause, offering not a product but the prospect of improving people’s lives, and donation to causes is a long-standing cultural tradition. Alexandra… she’s making a living, last I checked, but from what I understand, it’s a struggle. Last I checked, she was getting 70-80,000 hits per Tales of MU post. How much hardship would it be for those people, even in a recession, if she required them to throw her, say, a buck a month, for the privilege of reading her work? $12 per year, less than a paperback book? Do the math – she’d be rich. Say 15/16s of them said “What? I’m not paying, even that little!” and quit reading. That’s still 5K readers at $12 per year. $60,000. Better living than the vast majority of writers, paper or pixels. And better than she’s getting. Point being she is not being paid what her work is actually worth in terms of value each reader derives x number of readers, or what she’d get for selling an equivalent number of dead-tree copies of her books.
So how do we get paid what our writing is worth?
First of all, we have to be willing to declare it’s worth something, and second, we have to decide what that is, so as to set a price. Both of these require believing that it’s worth something.
Before I go any further, let me point something out. If when you read the last part of that sentence, “We have to decide what that is, so as to set a price,” you got an icky little feeling and wanted to say something like, “I never know how much to price anything,” let me tell you who’s talking. It’s your COWD. People who are pure CEO don’t worry about it. They just make a calculation and go with the result, and if that doesn’t work they just add the new results into the calculation and go with the new result.
So what is writing worth in general? In the dead-tree world, from the writer’s standpoint, somewhere between 6 and 10% of book sale revenue, depending on how much clout you have and how good a deal you can get. No more. How does that translate into $ per hour? You cannot calculate until the book is on the shelves. And even then, you don’t know how long it will last at that pace. In the magazine world, you won’t get over 10 cents a word unless you’re doing journalism, especially travel or leisure. In the literary journal world, it’s mostly worth nothing except contributor’s copies.
But that’s from the writer’s standpoint. If you look at it from a reader’s standpoint, the answer is dead simple and to be found in any bookstore. A paperback fiction book, whether it’s trash or classic literature, costs about $15, plus tax. That’s what people pay, and expect to pay, for a dead-tree book. Of that, the writer will receive 10% max, or $1.50—more often, 6%, or 90 cents.
What that means is that your writing is worth $0.90-1.50 per book per reader, if you count the reading experience you offer as equal to what can be had a bookstore. (I myself should, because a) I keep my roof over my head by my pen as a freelance journalist and b) the fiction reading experience I can provide has been in bookstores… and I’ve become a much better writer since then. My COWD won’t let me fully feel this, though. If you don’t feel your writing is equal to what can be had in a bookstore, move heaven and earth to find out whether that’s due to your COWD or whether your writing actually needs improvement, in which case move heaven and earth to improve it. If you want to be a career writer, this is your job.)
Now if you are a weblit writer, you might not have a solid idea of the meaning of “book” i.e. how many words a novel is. Here you go: 90,000 words is a standard Harlequin romance – a slim book. 100,000 is more average, 120,000 is a substantial book and 150,000 is a brick. Thus I know that my million words should really be divided into at least seven or eight books, and I will configure them that way when I do PDFs and ebooks and audiobooks and stuff like that, once CEO beats off COWD enough to go ahead.
Now you might also run into the argument—either internally from your COWD or from readers—that your weblit book is not a “real” book. What does that mean? Well, on one level, it means readers don’t have a physical, material book to curl up around, put on their shelves, etc. But that’s okay, because you can easily compensate them for that. As your own publisher, you are not bound to the massive expense – the biggest cost in producing dead-tree books – of killing the trees, mashing them flat, putting ink squiggles on them and hauling them all over the world. So you can pass on that discount to the reader.
On another level, it’s the quality argument—if a book hasn’t been vetted by a real publisher with real editors, it’s not going to be any good. A genuine concern, because there is some truth to it. There is a lot of pap on the Net. But then, there’s a lot of pap in bookstores. Sturgeon’s Law springs to mind.
But the Internet is a self-correcting problem. You will find out whether your work is pap. Either readers will tell you mercilessly in comments, or vote with their cursors (buh-bye!). If your COWD is anxiously asking, “What if I’m charging for my work when it’s really worth nothing because it isn’t that good? Isn’t that wrong?”, get your CEO to tell her, don’t worry! Readers are big boys and girls, responsible for their own choices. You can’t rip people off, because if they don’t like your free excerpt, they won’t buy. If they do like it and buy, they’re getting value out of it so you are not ripping them off, no matter how crappy you think it is. One way or the other, the pulsating blob of virtual humanity that is the Internet will let you know.
In the meantime, your job is to make your work, and that includes your website and its presentation, as professional, attractive and high-quality as you possibly can. That means learning your craft and hiring help where needed. Yes, we have a reputation problem, but it can be overcome. Professionalism in presentation is part of it; the other part is helping readers distinguish those writers who have a professional level of dedication and so are more likely to develop, or have developed, a professional level of skill, from those who are hobbyists.
That was the original intent of the term “weblit.” I proposed it not just to differentiate work like mine from fanfic, but from your average hobbyist stuff. (I am a no-fooling-around writer. I devote 8-10 hours a day writing or doing other stuff related to my weblit, on top of my day job, which is, fortunately, part-time.) Forward-thinking weblit writers such as MeiLin (who had this site up a bare few days after hearing the term September 2009) Alexandra, MCM, Gabriel Gadfly and Elizabeth Barrette have picked up on that and begun using it, as have innumerable others who you’ll see if you search #weblit on Twitter. The term does not need defining (despite the efforts of those who did not coin it to do so). That is why I’ve never written a definition. People automatically know what it means, and writers trying to carve out careers on the Net use it because they know people automatically know what it means.
I will leave off here, and return with Part II, on monetization, later, I’m not sure exactly when but not too long from now. Part of what I was going to write has been covered excellently in the premium content thread, but I’ll talk about the results of my poll and the comments on it in the light of the psychology of money, and possibly other topics.
This is going to be negative, I'm afraid, but I think someone needs to play devil's advocate in the true sense here. I have a big issue with the paywall model, or at least with the main content behind the paywall model.
Why should I believe it'll work for weblit when historically it fails so abysmally for everything else? If people are less likely to commit to weblit than other stuff, they're less likely to pay for it too.
Two about news site paywalls:
Yet Another Paywall Experiment Fails
The first wave of internet pay walls
And of course something I found a while back via Meilin's site...
Comics comics comics wherein the author responds to (among other things) the suggestion that webcomics might monetise by putting the archives behind a paywall by dissecting the idea, and basically saying "it won't work".
Here's the thing, even in the dead tree world a good book has many more readers than the number of books sold new. There's people who borrow it from the library, people who borrow it from friends, people who buy it second hand. Then there's the fact that I have stood in bookshops and read entire books before sticking them back on the shelf and buying something else, and I'm not the only one. Hell, some bookshops even have seats for this purpose. I wouldn't be shocked if the best dead tree books have similar readership to copies sold new ratio to that the best weblit authors have between all readers and paying readers.
I remember a long time ago when the Internet was young reading a writing book and in it the author at one point said that the worst thing a published writer could hear was "I loved your book, I borrowed it from the library/a friend". They cursed readers who read books without buying them and went on to to express the hope that the coming digital revolution would enable technologies that would prevent the lending of books so all would be readers would have to buy. In other words they conceived of DRM before it existed. I remember thinking at the time "no, that'll just piss people off".
So later DRM was actually invented and all it's done is annoy people. DRM-free is a selling point! Many people boycott (or pirate) stuff they would otherwise buy because of DRM.
Paywalls are like DRM in many ways. They serve the same purpose of limiting (or attempting to limit) content to paying customers. They annoy paying customers for the same reason as DRM as well. People like to be able to share stuff they've paid for. Tell them they can't and people look at you askance.
Also I'd say that people don't think your stuff is worthless because you give it away on the web. The web is made of free and, while quality varies, a lot of it is brilliant.
We're still learning but I see no reason to expect weblit monetization to differ from the rest of the web. Freemium models work, pure premium models just don't, and you can even lose your paying readers with them.
It's not that the web is any more loaded with freeloaders than the offline world, it's just you notice them more.
Becka
I don't think it's an all or nothing concept.
The premium content thread is talking about putting certain things behind a paywall. The serial+ model puts the whole story behind a paywall, even though it will be eventually free if you can wait. I think Karen's talking about a mixture of free and paid content.
Yes, making people pay pisses them off. No matter what you do.
The question is essentially how to try to convince people to compensate you for your work. You say that freemium models work, but they don't, not really. Or at least, they are not working for me. Are they working for you? How much money have you made from weblit this year?
I haven't made enough to cover the cost of keeping my website online.
There are two options as to why very few weblit authors make much money.
a-Maybe there isn't a big enough audience to support it. (Essentially all our stuff only appeals to a small group of people)
b-We're not doing a good job trying to monetize it (advertising, payment models, etc.)
If it's b, at least there's hope, so I choose to believe b.
(I suppose there's one other option: my work sucks. 
)
deleted. Accidental double post. Sorry.
Yep, I know neither Meilin or Karen are planning a primary content behind the paywall idea. I was responding to this part of Karen's post...
How much hardship would it be for those people, even in a recession, if she required them to throw her, say, a buck a month, for the privilege of reading her work? $12 per year, less than a paperback book? Do the math – she’d be rich. Say 15/16s of them said “What? I’m not paying, even that little!” and quit reading. That’s still 5K readers at $12 per year. $60,000. Better living than the vast majority of writers, paper or pixels. And better than she’s getting.
That would be a primary content behind the wall model, and those don't work. Though I suppose someone might prove me wrong. I think Skyla Dawn Cameron is doing this with CoTA, so we can watch and see what transpires.
Things we know work at least sometimes...
Extra content (the bonus stuff behind the wall).
Merch (works for webcomics, should work for us)
Serial+
Advertising (to a degree)
Extra updates/Bonus stories for donations
Something which might work but I'm not sure anyone's tried it...
Read ahead (similar to bonus content and serial+). This idea is to put each post up initially in the premium user zone and then move it to the free area after a certain period of time (say a month).
I'm waiting until I get a few more readers before asking for money, seems pointless if there aren't enough to make money off. But the number is growing...
And this is why we aren't making money. We don't have enough readers. I've been putting myself about on webcomics for the last 3 months and am gaining 2-3 readers a day from what my metrics say. Certainly my returning visitors number is rising. I reckon I've got about 200 readers now. Prior to my ad campaign I had maybe ten, probably less. I may stick up a donation at about 500 readers, but more likely 1k. We'll see.
Becka
I come from a public radio background. It's out there, for free, just like us. Only about 10% of the audience contributes. Sponsors (and that's what they are, even if it's just a 5 second single line of spoken text) make up the other half of the budget. For us, that seems like the model to pursue. Between 5-10% of my audience contributes, just as in public radio; the rest comes from advertisers.
The trick is, as Becka says, getting readers.
I just put stuff behind a paywall today for the first time. Well, a semi-paywall; longtime readers with at least 800 points can get behind the paywall too right now along with the paying Patrons. The material is mostly ephemera--the first draft of the History, which I REALLY don't want lying around for anyone to look at any more, the Ask a Tremontine forum, which is for fun. Eventually the "Tales from the Lovers' Temple" stories will be behind the paywall for Patrons only, not points people (have to write them first). The serials will be out there for free, though a lot more dribbly than the old 3 times a week schedule. (I've begun to think of that pattern as the Wall Street Journal model: the popular stuff free and the ephemera/niche stuff behind the paywall.)
So how many readers do you need to make, say, $20,000/year? Let's say we take the public radio model as is, so $10,000 from advertising. Yes, this can be done; I do it on my nonfiction site every year--closer to $18,000. Ad revenue goes up with audience size. So we need to get $10,000 from our audience. Let's posit an annual donation of $10--it's just a nice round number.
To get to $10,000, you need 1,000 people making $10 donations. At best case 10% of audience donating, that means you need an audience of 10,000. At less optimistic case 5% of audience donating, you need an audience of 20,000. That doesn't have to be per day, but it does mean 10-20,000 truly unique visitors every year--10-20,000 unique readers of your work. This is also possible, though harder. At my peak (when I was updating the History), I had 2,000 unique readers a day. I have no idea how many true uniques that could have been, but I did make at least $5,000 not counting ad revenue or the funds used to put the book out.
So it's a matter of scale, folks. That's what it comes down to. And scaling up readership means getting the word out about your site, however you can do it.
The other thing I feel compelled to note is that free is not the same as cheap in psychological terms.
If I were to try to sell you a perfectly good apple at a quarter of its market value you'd wonder what was wrong with it, but if I just offer you an apple that's entirely different.
That's true in the offline world, but it's even more true online. Here on the web there is an expectation of free that's been fed by sites such wikipedia and podiobooks, by web comics, indie musicians and film makers, by the open source movement, and the general nature of the web.
Why? Because the "perceived value" mental transaction isn't based on real worth, it's based on 'what would I expect to pay for a similar product elsewhere?' and almost invariably when it comes to primary content on the web the answer is zilch. And it's zilch even for content people would reasonably expect to pay for offline. eg People happily pay for newspapers offline, but a news site tries to charge for the same content online and gets a big "NO!" from its readership (well the Financial Times is different, but its readership is a niche group).
Bonus content behind a paywall seems to work better looking at the web comics. Why people don't mind paying for extras but object to paying for the meat I don't know. It's cultural I guess.
What webcomics have you seen doing that? I'm interested to see how they do it. The only webcomic I can think of that does something like that is Joyce and Walky, which, I believe, has one comic for free a week and then the rest of the week's comics (however many that is) are behind a pay wall. (I don't read that comic, but I do read the creator's other comic, Shortpacked!.) All the other webcomics I read seem to make their money through a combination of advertising and merch/books.
Hmm... Hijinks Ensue does for one, so does Achewood apparently. I don't know much about Achewood but Hijinks Ensue also does merchandising and books.
At Hijinks Ensue anyone who makes a donation (so far as I know any donation) gets a month's access to the Vault, subscribers get access until they cancel (their access being revoked a month after their last payment).
I'm sure there are others but those are the two I know of.
As always on topics like this, I'll preface my comments by stating that, as I chiefly write poetry, a lot of my experiences won't apply to the rest of you, simply because the art of writing, reading, promoting, and selling poetry is so much different than prose.
Since January 2010, I've spent 10 dollars on a domain name renewal. I've made $291.76, for an overall profit of $281.76 this year, after things like Paypal fees. 63% of that revenue comes from reader donations, with another 6% coming from Project Wonderful ad revenue. The remaining 31% comes from a combination of sales of Alabama Dragonslayer: A Confederate Fantasy (a premium short story PDF sold at $2.00 a pop) and MP3 downloads of recorded poetry (sold at 50 cents a pop). I keep a balance sheet to keep track of all my writing related expenses and incomes.
That means I've made roughly $40.25 every month this year. That's not a lot by any means, but it pays anywhere from two-thirds to all of my electric bill every month, and by my standards, that's pretty damn good, and that's with relatively lackluster monetization and promotion efforts.
The relatively high percentage of donations is probably due to the highly emotional value of my content. At least three-quarters of the donations I receive have little notes tacked on where the reader mentions that they laughed/teared-up/were-moved/healed/etc by one of my poems (often referencing the specific poem in question).
I try to only post the best content possible. For every poem that shows up on my site, I probably write 3-4 that no one ever sees; some of those are just fodder to get my creative juices flowing. Some of them end up in a never-ending revision pile. Even then, poems get posted on the site that I'm not terribly proud of; about once a month, I go back and read through some of my posts and make small edits and manipulations to the poems. Of course, I'm working with poems that are only 100-200 words, max, so the alteration of a single word can make or break a poem.
My overall long-term goal is to make my writing earn enough for me to live on. At the moment, that's so far off it's almost not in sight. On the other hand, since my day job covers all my expenses, I don't have to worry much about not making money with my site, and the money I do make is pure profit.
I'm going to be experimenting with some new things in the coming weeks, including a subscription model to gain access to bonus content, chapbooks containing never-before-seen poems of mine, an increased library of MP3 downloads, merchandise, better ad placement.
I don't expect to find a single major income source. But if I make 10% here and 10% there and 10% over there from enough different sources, it adds up to a decent amount. And if any one source dries up, it means I'm not suddenly out of luck.
That's the way you do it: multiple income streams.
I'm not sure if any of you follow Problogger.net, but if you aren't, you ought to head over there and read through some of the articles. Darren Rowse, the author, was one of the first people to really write about the ability to make money from blogs (and to write about it in a way that didn't come off like a snake-oil salesman), and he's been earning a six-figure income from it for quite a while. Granted, a lot of his advice is focused more towards product-centered blogs (he also writes a very popular digital photography blog, so he makes a lot off of affiliate sales of expensive camera equipment), but most of the info, even if it's not directly applicable to what we do, still works in theory.
He covers all sorts of things, including monetization, design tweaks, usability, traffic growth, managing multiple income streams. His "30 Days To A Better Blog" series of posts is a good place to start.
Oh yeah,
"30 Days To A Better Blog"
I've been meaning to look at that ready for my blog's relaunch.
Seconded: I've been reading him on and off for years. Thanks for the 'tickle."
This must seem a bit like hit and run posting, but I first wanted to let a number of other people comment before I did, and then the poop hit the air freshener in terms of scheduling, allowing no time, which is where I am now. I'll be back, I promise.
It's a good advice, but my current plans is make a compilation of my novels within the same subseries when they are finished with extra print exclusive contents in it. However, I might risk myself by offering to sell rights to make video game adaptations (which may incur internet users' wrath/anger) if I am to make writing as my sole income source. I don't write for money, but merely as an expression of my wild imagination.
I'm glad this thread has generated lots of discussion including spin-offs in other threads.
Just want to answer Becka re this:
Why? Because the "perceived value" mental transaction isn't based on real worth, it's based on 'what would I expect to pay for a similar product elsewhere?' and almost invariably when it comes to primary content on the web the answer is zilch. And it's zilch even for content people would reasonably expect to pay for offline. eg People happily pay for newspapers offline, but a news site tries to charge for the same content online and gets a big "NO!" from its readership (well the Financial Times is different, but its readership is a niche group).
I disagree. Aside from the answer to the question, "Do I like it?," perceived value is based not on "what would I expect to pay for a similar product elsewhere" or "what would I prefer to pay for a similar product elsewhere." It is based on "what people in general are willing to pay for a similar product." Everyone wants to get something for nothing. The way people who read newspapers online know that they're getting something is that people elsewhere are paying for them (and also that the work is being produced by paid professionals.) The way people who scarf free music online know they're getting something for nothing is the reputations the artists have gained through their paid gigs. They don't look for Joe Obscuro.
We're not talking about what people want here. We are talking about what they perceive is a fair price for something, whether they want to pay it or not, and therefore how they value a product based on what is charged for it. This factor is very real. You'd think people would choose to pay $1.25 rather than $2.50 for my friend's cards, but you'd be wrong. The declared price influences the perceived value.
Let me put it to you this way: would you prefer to read a novel by a professional author, or an amateur? What, honestly, would you consider the chances to be of the one novel versus the other being a good read?
Given that, how do you present yourself as a professional author? Publishing credits are good, but what if you have none? There is only one way to do it (on top of professional presentation and good work): you have to charge. If you charge and people pay, from thenceforth you can call yourself a pro.
Incidentally, my poll is complete. I worded the question not "What would you like to pay?" but "What would be a fair price?". I offered options ranging from $1/month to $10/month. I did not offer the $0 option. I got as many votes as for the most popular previous polls (generally involving sex), so I know that not a lot of people refrained from voting to express a $0 vote. I got some excellent, thoughtful comments. The votes averaged out to about $4/month. I figure that is probably the most exact measure of the perceived value of my work that I can get at this point, and it was not $0. So that is what I'm going to charge.
Let me put it to you this way: would you prefer to read a novel by a professional author, or an amateur? What, honestly, would you consider the chances to be of the one novel versus the other being a good read?
Honestly?
I'm the wrong person to ask that because my answer is far from typical. In bookshops I look at authors I've never heard of first because I already know and discount the established ones. I rarely buy fiction from bookshops any more not for want of looking but for want of finding stuff that holds my attention. Nowadays I read mostly Indie stuff because I just don't like most established authors' work. This makes me unusual since obviously most people have different tastes.
Just found this discussion started by M.C.A. Hogarth, which adds a few creator compensation models to the pot.
Alternative Models of Artist Compensation
Here's their rundown of models, followed by some extensive discussion.
As a reader I like having this option, mostly because there are times I want to toss money at someone in sheer glee for what they've done for me that day. As a writer, I don't like relying on it. I only put up donation buttons for things that I won't be upset if I don't make money on.
• the Kickstarter model (“if I raise $5k I will write this novel”)
As a reader, I don't like this because it puts too much burden on me to keep track of my "investment." When I give an artist money I don't want to have to think "I have to check back with them to see if they've held up their side of the bargain." That's too much effort for me. As an artist, I don't like it because... it puts too much stress on me to deliver. If I don't have the product already ready, I will vibrate all my hair off until it is.
And you know how much I care about my hair.
• the “ransom” model (“I won’t publish my next chapter until I get donations”)
As a writer, this the model I use most often for my "salary." I like it because it's a good mix of anticipation and delivery. It's not so huge a project that if I fail to deliver immediately I am going to explode from stress, but it also means I don't work unless the money's coming in. As a reader, I like it too... but only if I know there are plenty of other people reading along with me, because it sucks not to get the next chapter. -_-
• the subscription or membership model (pay a fee for yearly access)
As a reader, few people put out enough stuff to make a yearly access fee worthwhile. As a writer/artist, few yearly fees are high enough to compensate me for the amount of work I do a year.
• the “perks” model (make a donation and receive a special bonus scene)
Oddly, I hate this model as a reader because I have to (again) keep track of whether the artist's actually delivered. I hate that. And I hate feeling disappointed when they don't get around to it. I'd much rather throw money at them and say "buy a cup of coffee" with no expectation of anything else and no recompense except the feeling of feeling good for having done it. As a writer, I hate producing extra perks to spec... unless I already have them done. Then I'm all for it.
• the merchandising model (buy my T-shirts, mugs, action figures)
This is fine with me as a reader, but I rarely buy Stuff. I have no room for more stuff. As an artist, I find it takes a lot of time and I have yet to see it make me any appreciable money, though I'm going to give it a year or two before I decide that it's time to stop wasting time and effort on it.
• the collectibles model (buy my special leatherbound gilt edition)
As a reader: I don't care. I don't like Stuff. As an artist, wow, lot of time to spend on something.
• the company or support grant model (corporate sponsorship/gov’t grant)
I haven't tried this as a writer, though I keep meaning to. As a reader I don't care unless it's in my face. Then I want it out of my face.
• the voting model (“we don’t pay the Hugo winner, but what if we did?”)
As a reader and a writer, I think this rewards people with more mainstream outlets or a bigger advertising budget, and then goes on to pile more cachet on top of people who already have access to it. Not a fan of the idea, thus.
• the hits/pageviews model (traffic=ad revenue)
As a writer I have yet to try this because I can't figure out where I'd put an ad where it wouldn't be obtrusive. I have placed ads for my websites through Project Wonderful to some (surprising to me) success. As a reader, I'm sad to say I use ad-blockers. >.>
My CEO got a little pissy yesterday when one of my readers commented on my facebook wall:
I loved Breathless [free book], but I was a tad angry with the only half-free Death Girl[other book for sale, with a free preview].
But I FORGAVE you.
(My emphasis)
I waited a day to respond, because I wanted to SCREAM at her. The next day, I was still PO'ed, but I didn't scream. Still, in my response, while I thanked her for reading, I felt I needed to make it clear that my writing was hard work, and I didn't think I needed to be forgiven for asking to be compensated for it. I think was polite about it. (I worded it better than I did here.
You've given me an idea from this post, though, and I think that the sequel I'm working on is going to be marketed a bit differently. It will still be a serial+, but I think I will open it up to advance sales a full month before I begin posting it. Making them wait (even longer) may make them crazy enough to buy it. Scarcity, I think, is another way to make something seem valuable.
I don't know that I've ever given my work away for free without the option to buy it. I've always only released it a little at a time, hoping that anticipation would force people to buy the book. So I don't know if I'm giving the impression that it's worth nothing. I do price things low, though, maybe only because I do want my books to be able to fall into a sort of impulse-buy category. Like, "Oh, I do want to know what happens in this little, sort of trashy, violent book here. What's five dollars, anyway?"
Thanks for this thought-provoking post, Karen. Can't wait for Part II. Cheers!