Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

By • Sep 30th, 2009 • Category: 26th Story, Big Ideas, Business

NYU's Media TalkI’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s panel discussion about free versus paid content, moderated by Chris Anderson, author of “Free.” The discussion moved primarily between two points of view; Chris’s view that media companies should be much more aggressive in their experimentation, giving more content away in order to sell “premium” content (he said that he should have titled the book “Freemium,” jokingly blaming his editor, Will Schwalbe, for pushing the catchier “Free”), while the panelists (John Sargent, ceo of Macmillan; Gary Hoenig of ESPN Publishing; and Alan Murray, in charge of online at the Wall Street Journal) were talking about the dangers of giving too much away. Alan Murray, for instance, was glad that the Journal had charged for its online content from the beginning, as opposed to the New York Times’s approach, because it’s very hard to go back from free to paid.

Even Chris had to admit that the experiment of giving away his most recent book for free in e-book form had been a mixed success. “Free” was given away to 500,000 people via various e-book platforms, but sold less than what Chris’s previous book had (“The Long Tail“). But as I told Chris after the panel, the problem wasn’t the experiment. The experiment was a great learning experience, and even if they sold only ten percent of the sales on “The Long Tail,” that would have been a success if the book had been done on a low advance/profit-sharing basis. The problem is when authors want to have their cakes and eat them, too…getting a large advance but wanting to experiment with free content models, or getting a large advance and then deciding that what they really want is more marketing. I love to experiment, too…but we should all benefit equally from the results.

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  • Bob Miller

    Sorry if I misrepresented any of what you said…I stand corrected, thanks.

  • http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com RichRennicks

    And in the mind of the reader you get what you pay for. I've had a free Kindle version of Free on my phone since it came out, but so far have read about 80 pages while stuck in Dentist's waiting rooms, Doctor's offices, etc. The interface renders some of the charts and sidebars oddly, and I personally find the lack of note-taking ability maddening.

    Moral of the story: If you want someone to read a book and talk it up in a timely fashion, give them a book.

  • http://www.bradleyrobb.net Knownhuman

    Or a technology which is suited to the needs of the reader. Until publishers start hiring people who can make a proper epub (hint – publishers should be looking at web designers and developers and not typesetters) and marry that format with a device which allows natural input, than entire sectors of the publishing industry will be hampered.

  • zlite

    Bob,

    Thanks for the post, but I need to correct a few things. First, my comment about the title (“Free” vs “Freemium”) was a joke–sorry that wasn't more clear. Of course “Freemium”, while more accurate, would have been a disastrous title, since nobody knows what it means. I totally agreed with Will on the title. As I mentioned at the panel, as a magazine editor I know that a little bit of bait and switch is required in effective magazine coverlines as well as book titles; this was well within the norms for that.

    Second, I never said Free sold “a fraction” of what the Long Tail sold. Instead, I said it sold “less”. In fact, it's just a few percent less at this point, and the game's not over.

  • http://twitter.com/debbiestier debbiestier

    You're so smart. I agree with you. And stay tuned :)

  • http://www.bradleyrobb.net Knownhuman

    Aw shucks.

  • Bob Miller

    I've amended my post to reflect Chris's corrections. I hope that the point is still clear, though.

  • http://chapmanchapman.wordpress.com/ Ryan Chapman

    And let's not forget that “Free” and “The Long Tail” are two different products. “Free” may be a better book (it's all subjective, right?), but its predecessor was picked up by the business world in a way few books are. I'm glad Bob pointed out that one needs new metrics for success for this title since the author and publisher are experimenting with the rollout.

    I know the goal here is looking at new business models, but I assume the author's got to feel pretty great that 500K people were interested enough to download his content.

  • http://robertwahl.blogspot.com/ robert wahl

    Speaking of new bizz models… what's the guess on the APPLE TABLET?

    Haste yee back ;-)

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  • http://voxnewman.myopenid.com/ voxnewman

    So, where's the meat of this idea? Any conclusions that would be useful for someone who is unpublished getting into it?