May 17, 2016 
sharon 
I had a sad Friday the 13th when a quirky website I very much enjoy called The Toast announced they are closing down. The founders of the Toast had a very frank conversation about their decision to do so; I do not know much about website monetization, but I found it a very fascinating discussion of how the websites we read every day make enough money to stay afloat (or not) and pay their writers (or not).
I wonder if the digital age has taught us to expect free content. Anytime you read (or watch or listen to) something fantastic, a lot of people were involved in creating it, from writers and editors to web designers and comment moderators. We are so used to scrolling Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and instantly clicking through to interesting links, whether at new media hubs like Buzzfeed and Slate or traditional giants like the New York Times and Washington Post without thinking about who pays the people who make those sites interesting, entertaining, and reliable. I personally have known a moment of outrage when something that caught my attention is behind a paywall! And moving from journalism to publishing, e-book piracy is an ongoing problem for publishers and authors, as this handy infographic explores. Then following last week’s BEA/Book Con in Chicago, there was conversation on Twitter about why it’s awful when galleys intended for bloggers, reviewers, and librarians turn up for sale on eBay:
Here are the reasons why it's wrong to sell an unpublished ARC on eBay. 1. The author has worked really, really hard & deserves a royalty.
— Jodi Picoult (@jodipicoult) May 15, 2016
This is very simple. If you sell ARCs, you are stealing from me and my publisher. If you buy ARCs, you are supporting that theft. The end.
— Jay Kristoff (@misterkristoff) May 15, 2016
As a literary agent, I obviously think it’s important to protect authors and to make sure they, and everyone who works on their books, are paid for their hard work. But on the other hand, the internet can be an amazing equalizer, bringing resources to communities who wouldn’t have them otherwise. So maybe we need to be looking for the next frontier of the internet that will protect both its important accessibility and intellectual property!
What do you think? Is the explosion of internet content training us to think we should be able to read for free? What kinds of websites or other content would you be willing to pay for? What do you think the next frontier is to monetize our favorite sites and keep the best parts of the internet accessible to all users?
I love and support Powell’s Books, but it’s always irritated me to find ARCs on the shelves there. I don’t know what their official policy is, but I’ve definitely seen them there. They should know better.
I expect free access to web content that a website creator has developed (or paid for) when it’s arranged to build their reputation and platform — i.e., for their personal benefit. Free works are also provided in a spirit of a gift to the universe or with other ulterior motives (e.g. teacher notes for a book as part of its promotion), or perhaps to gain income through Ad-sense, affiliate links, advertising or the sale of a product. Useful content will always be available for these purposes without charge. Information and creative output can also be a product in itself and if it is valuable enough to me as entertainment or for research, it can’t be easily found elsewhere for free and someone wants to charge for it, I’ll pay. I mainly buy books after having read an excerpt, courses and training videos, and subscriptions to ‘membership sites’ that provide specialist resources and interaction. I think paying for interaction will increase.
For whatever reason I and others write and add articles and images to the net, or distribute ARCs, I do believe the originator automatically owns (should own) copyright and in theory should be able to control usage.
Vendors of content will probably be upset if it is shared and a potential extra sale is lost. If someone visits you in person and asks about a course you are doing, do you show them material from it or even give them a copy? What is ‘fair use’? Do you include information that you have paid for, or gleaned from the net, in talks and always provide attribution?
The problem is that I am delighted for some of my articles to be shared and go viral e.g. those that promote one of my books, my skills or my business, and I hope people share links to some of my output which helps build my platform, but I would be disappointed if someone took an article from my website and reaped personal financial benefit from printing multiple copies of it or large chunks of it without seeking permission and providing attribution. People should also recognise that all my photographic images are automatically copyright and permission for use or sharing should similarly be requested and attribution given …but I know that many don’t recognise my copyright. And I can understand that if I post an image of a 17th century book, some folk will save the image and use it because the book is way out of copyright. But in fact, the culture of ‘grabbing off the net’ is now so prevalent and ingrained, I would not add anything to a website and expect to retain control — unless the content is sold with copyright and usage conditions made very clear, along with a request for respect …and even then, I know violations will be made. More and more people seem to believe that whatever they have ‘bought’ or been given is theirs to do with as they like — including selling ARCs.
I’ve read that it’s advisable to put Copyright and your name on all your web pages, and add ‘Please print and share leaving links and copyright information in place’ on those that can assist in
building your profile and in promoting your own site and products. Here in Australia, if schools or other organisations record fair-use printing of such pages and the copyright holder’s name, compensation is paid to the creator by our government Copyright and Lending Rights body, requiring no payment from the school. Maybe, with enough pressure, this payment for use will come into force in all countries.
Thanks, Peter, for such a thoughtful response! Good point that we should adjust our expectations to the reality – while people are treating copyright lightly, we should be wise about what we make available.
Free content isn’t free and, in the case of journalism, it is destroying our society. The job of the press is to inform the people, particularly about the institutions and people that govern them. An individual can not fight, or even expose, a corrupt system, but the press can. Or could when they were paid for their content.
The world is full of freshly minted journalism majors who are willing to string words together for next-to-nothing. But that’s not journalism. Investigative reporters and foreign bureaus all cost money.
Bob Woodward recently admitted that the Washington Post has 20 full-time reporters digging into Donald Trump and that the same number of reporters are available to dig into Hillary Clinton. No matter your political views, this is what journalism is supposed to do. Question authority, ask the questions Joe Citizen can’t. But who is paying for those reporters? Is Jeff Bezos, the new owner of WaPo, paying for it out of his own deep pockets? That would be generous of him, and in a way, commendable, but do we want a handful of billionaires controlling all the content? Or worse, newspapers just parroting content fed to them by politicians and big businesses.
I think this, like free and dirt-cheap e-books, will sort itself out overtime. People will be willing to pay a little more for quality, not just words strung together.
This also runs up against the tag-team thumb-wrestling championship we’ve been having on this blog about the wonders of social media as a miracle rocket engine for authors of whatever genre or degree of expression, my overall problem with which is that if you build a big audience in a world of short-attention- span free riders, 97% of them will vanish in a puff of smoke at the first sign of a paywall. As one of Eric’s star clients proved not long ago, one kid reads a considerably above-average work, tells her friend, who tell two of their friends, and THIS is where the internet really pays. If you want to spend hours posting free fiction on the web plus a video of yourself making balloon animals at the mall in the hopes of hitting the big time, be my guest, but I’ve got cars to chase and moons to bark at-(which I’m told is the Next Big Thing!!!)
Hmmmm could be – perhaps we’re still in the growing pains of figuring out that you really do get what you pay for!