Surfing the Efficiency Gain
By John Vorhaus | July 23, 2015 |
Ever since last month, when WriterUnboxed introduced the tinyCoffee widget to this website and created the opportunity for readers and writers to get together over a cup of virtual joe (readers’ treat) my head has been spinning – in some senses exploding – with the possibilities that this innovation presents. Not to put too fine a point on it, the revolution has arrived – and the middleman is dead! Thanks to tinyCoffee and its ilk, writers from Tarzana to Tanzania can now form an easy, fruitful, direct – and monetized! – relationship with their readers. Listen carefully… that Cheyne-Stokes respiration you hear? It could be conventional publishing breathing its last.
As we know, the relationship between writer and reader has traditionally been bridged by a long, clumsy, costly string of go-betweens, including pulpers, printers, warehousers, distributors and booksellers. Of course the presence of all these middlemen controlled — constrained — the author’s piece of the pie. And you couldn’t beat the system because there was no alternative to the print-it, store-it, ship-it, stock-it, sell-it paradigm.
In recent years we have seen online sellers like Amazon and print-on-demand services like CreateSpace eliminate the need for warehousing, distribution, and many other links in the gotta-get-my-taste chain. That’s why Amazon can afford to give writers a 70 percent royalty – because that company’s role in the process has been reduced to the low-overhead duties of fulfillment and bookkeeping. Mostly what they’re doing is surfing the tremendous efficiency gain created by the elimination of all those other middlemen.
But I’m sitting here thinking, “Why stop there? Why not eliminate the last remaining middlemen and surf that efficiency gain to a whole new way of selling my work?”[pullquote] “Wanna buy my book without paying all those meddlesome middlemen? Just click here.”[/pullquote]
Take my book A Million Random Words. Comprised, as advertised, of a million random words, it’s an eclectic product for a rarefied taste, and sells to almost no one on Amazon for the princely sum of five dollars. I offer digital versions only, for the manifest reason that a print edition would run to some 3,500 pages – an unconscionably large number of dead trees.
Now picture a webpage called A Million Random Words, where you find not only the book but also strategies for using it and games to play with it, plus the opportunity to download the property or view it online. There you will also see some version of this pitch: “If you find, or found, this work worthwhile, consider purchasing your copy – at your price – via the big, friendly button below.”
And that button is friendly. Thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, it’s suddenly ridiculously easy for a content consumer to make a quick, hassle-free decision to buy. This is the revolutionary part, kids, the part we’ve never really had before. Now if someone has a brief fling with A Million Random Words, they can pay me, directly, just like handing cash over the counter. And how much of that cash goes to me? Today, through PayPal, around 85 percent. That’s better than Amazon’s 70 percent, and I don’t think it’s nearly the best we’ll see. Credit cards commonly charge 2 to 5 percent for their services, and I predict that downward pressure on prices will eventually result in transaction fee percentages in the low single digits for peer-to-peer deals like this.
Downward pressure on prices, though, let’s keep our eye on that. It’s one of the big problems today’s writers face in getting paid for their labor – there’s so much competition from writers who just want to be read and don’t care whether they’re paid or not. That’s why I’m so intrigued with the tinyCoffee model. It doesn’t make me compete against me; rather, it lets me compete against free.
If it brings in even a few bucks, that’s a few bucks I wouldn’t otherwise have. And if some buyers don’t buy – they just take the content and run – I’m still ahead of the game. Why? Because my product is digital, and my copies are infinite. I have it, they steal it, I still have it! Plus I’m always concerned with building my brand, and even give-away copies can contribute to that, can’t they?
Can’t they?
Folks, I don’t know. I’m struggling with this as much as you are. Year over year my Amazon revenues have remained flat or fallen, even as I’ve introduced new titles. I’ve been at indy-publishing long enough now to conclude that, absent a big hit breakthrough, the best I can hope for from the cottage-industry model is cottage-industry revenues. So maybe it’s my time to embrace a new model that surfs the efficiency gains of having no middlemen and attempts to make its nut that way.
Maybe it’s your time, too. Do you have a body of work that’s just sitting there, gathering metaphorical dust on your hard drive? Is it good shit? You bet it’s good shit; you’ve known all along that it was. Yet you’ve despaired of finding a way to put it before people’s eyes and maybe get paid. The way is here. It’s staring us in the face. It’s called tinyCoffee (or its ten competitors’ names) and it’s at our disposal now.
There’s one thing we’ll have to get past first. For emotional and psychological reasons, we’ll have to be clear, both with ourselves and our readers, that this is not charity! This is an unprecedented opportunity for consumers of creative content to pay their content providers directly, without also paying all the pulpers, printers, truckers, warehousers, distributors and sellers in between.
With tinyCoffee, it’s easy to think of this transaction as a tip, and it’s easy to think of a tip as some sort of “artistic support” – charity; subsidy – but that’s just a language thing. Look how different the transaction feels if you change the pitch to, “Wanna buy my book without paying all those meddlesome middlemen? Just click here.” That’s not charity, that’s commerce, brought down to our level and made possible and personal thanks to ebooks and electronic funds transfer. For myself, I will never think of any money I receive by this method as patronage. Why would I? I work hard on my words. As do you. Never be ashamed to get paid.
Because I’m a dog with a bone with these things, I went ahead and breadboarded a Million Random Words website, and you can check that out here. Noisetrade.com is another good place to look if you want to see how others of your peers (including moi) are already using this model. If anyone wants to talk tech with me, we can do that on the side.
What does it mean to get paid? How does it feel to ask to be paid? How does it feel to be asked to pay? Is this a step in the right direction for writers or just another way to drive down the price of words?
[coffee]
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
This is a timely post John. My brain hurts from trying to navigate this whole writing world thing. I was just offered a book deal from a small press, something I thought I had to have to feel “official” and I’m turning it down. You are right – unless a publisher can do something for me I can’t do for myself (i.e. Market me with the big guys and that seems like a pipe dream) why would I sign? The options for Indies are growing everyday.
Hello John.
I’m glad you’re a dog with a bone on this issue. it deserves careful thought–anything that shrinks the “long, clumsy, costly string of go-betweens” that separate readers from worthy writers is worth careful thought.
So, I’m thinking, pondering, musing.
Question: how will readers find what you call the good shit, instead of ending up stuck in a sad, tedious, clumsy bog of bad shit? I know how it happens here at Writer Unboxed: the site is professionally managed by Therese Walsh and a capable staff. They serve as middlemen, and I come here every day because I know it’s worthy of my time. It’s where I can expect to find writers like you.
Question: Assuming THAT problem gets solved, I can understand giving something to get something. I can’t understand risking giving ALL of something to get nothing. We have ample proof that giving books away for free is every day less effective as a marketing tool. There’s just too much “product.”
“Do you have a body of work that’s just sitting there, gathering metaphorical dust on your hard drive? Is it good shit? You bet it’s good shit; you’ve known all along that it was.”
Uh huh. How many thousands of putative “authors” who make up the tedious, clumsy bog think exactly this way? I understand something like 4,500 new titles are released each day at Amazon. How will readers find their way around the bog to you and me?
Figure that one out, and I’ll send you a semi of Starbucks finest.
Hey John-
The last gasps of traditional publishing? That would be news to the print industry. It’s going strong. Different than it once was, yeah, but going strong.
Direct to consumer can be viewed as efficient but also as inefficient. There are two main problems. First, you are limited to consumers who buy e-books. Exact numbers are ever shifting but to simplify, e-book sales have leveled off at roughly 25% of all book sales. Thus, direct to consumer is not direct to *all* consumers, just some.
Second, there is vast competition and, essentially, only one bookstore in which to get noticed. That challenge exists in print and brick-and-mortar too, but it is enormously greater online.
There are a host of other issues. E-books generally sell better when they are accompanied by a widely distributed print edition. E-only works best for certain types of books, e.g. romance. Will juicy e-royalties stay at current levels? It’s nice to believe that yet the marketplace is controlled by one corporation that sets the terms and which can change them at will. And so on.
All that said, why not celebrate and enjoy some of the new possibilities, starting with a cup of coffee? Here’s one on me!
Thanks for the thoughtful and contrarian points of view. This is just the sort of debate I’d hoped to spark with my all-white-no-black picture of publishing. Barry, as to how one cuts through the clutter, I can’t tell you the answer for everyone, but I can tell you the answer for me: endless hustle; endlessly exposing people to my brand and my work. I’m also taking the VERY long view. None of this will bear full fruit unless/until I reach some sort of critical mass of readers and fans. So the short answer to you is: 1) have a brand, 2) build your brand.
But I suspect that for some people, the conversation goes like this. First thought: “Hey, JV’s right, that’s something I could totally do!” Second thought: “But I’m afraid.” Third thought: “It’s probably impossible anyhow.” Fourth thought: “I wonder what’s on TV.” And then the author’s great shit remains unexposed to the world — not because the world doesn’t notice it but because the author is afraid to expose it. I’m always afraid to expose it, but my motto is, “Throw it out the window and see if it lands,” and that’s how I get past the fear. If I can help even a handful of writers pull the trigger on “going commercial” — even if their revenues are nil or nearly nil — I’ll feel like I’m doing my job — no, not doing my job, serving my purpose.
Listen to Alt-rock icon Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk where she argues that we shouldn’t fight the fact that digital content is freely shareable — and suggests that artists can and should be directly supported by fans. Her new book is The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help.
Her talk ends with this question: “I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, “How do we make people pay for music?” What if we started asking, “How do we let people pay for music?”
If you are VERY well known already, or have the internet miracle known as ‘going viral’ happen to you (and stick), then maybe selling directly from your site only will work for you. Like JK Rowling. Only she doesn’t. Or Steven Pressfield, who does.
And you will have to deal with things like returns and reviews and unhappy customers.
I’m not saying the return might not be worth it, but a lot of people are trained to go to the big online retailers – Apple, Amazon – for their books, and they will be less happy having to use Paypal or one of the tinier companies that process payments.
And even less happy if they have to create an account just to do so. They will also either be less happy because they can’t buy the paper version or the audiobook (unless you also have those on your site), or create a whole new host of problems for you dealing with other forms than ebooks.
There are only so many hours in the day.
If you do this, please be sure to report! The details, if you are successful, will be fascinating. Write a book about it; sell the book.
Note: I’m not saying don’t. But I am a customer, and I do that extra step for very, very few authors (Pressfield was one) and only when he offered a very large discount to buy that way (which eliminate the financial advantage if you have to do that to get buyers).
Best of luck if you go that route. And maybe you’re seeing advantages some of us don’t, and are on the crest of the wave.
Like busking online. This idea, put into practice, might create positive public space.
Thanks for opening up the debate, John. Ever since tinyCoffee was introduced here, I’ve been thinking about how I might use it. I don’t want to bring traditional publishing to its knees (pace, Don); I just want to find a way to get some return on the stories gathering dust on my hard drive, as you say. I’m thinking that a good use would be to include the tipjar any time I offer free content. As Skipper said, it is like busking. I’ve danced on many a street corner while a hat is being passed around the audience. I love that there’s a way to pass the hat online.
I like the idea of being able to pay for content that I especially like, and think that works well here as the articles are always helpful. And I can see a blend of what John proposes and what Donald cautions. As Liz Carpenter once told me, “Never say no to an opportunity.” I think it is a wise author who takes advantage of both camps in the publishing world.
John, I use PayPal to sell ebooks, but I have to email the file to a purchaser. Does buying through your PayPal account generate a way to download the file? Or do you have to mail it?