It seems like music the book selling model is changing – Boing Boing has had a lot of posts recently that support the fairly obvious theory that giving away free e-books actually increases sales (it makes total sense, try before you buy always increases sales, and like CDs sometimes you want the physical object, more so with books.
So when Mr Holy13Nation recommended a book to me, The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason, it was great to see that as well as the usual Waterstones/Amazon gubbins they were using the same ‘pay what you like including $0’ model as introduced by Nine Inch Nails (no not Radiohead, they just stole that idea, and it was just a fan-gimmick cos as soon as it hit the shops the ‘free’ copies magically disappeared!).
You get the feeling that the likes of Mr Mason, BB’s Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig get it, that the future will be free electronic versions, or donation/pay what you like model, which will actually increase people buying books, CDs etc. as they’ll get a chance, as with P2P to ‘try before they buy’ – the idea that these technologies destroy the artist getting any money is ludicrous – who loses out is those with bad stale content.
It also makes sense as unlike the physical product the outlay is far far less – server space, bandwidth and setting up a paypal/ecommerce payment are far cheaper than the oil, shelf-space and outlay of a physical product. I think we will see more of this – and I’m pleasantly suprised to see a major publisher like Penguin get involved in this.
The book? Well only read the first few pages so I can’t give a review yet, but so far if you are into the sort of remix/mashup/open source and indeed YARR! pirate culture here at Radio Clash, then I think you’ll love this book. And at a nice price – one you determine.
Oh and even the book logo is Creative Commons, and available on the website, hence my ‘remix’ above.
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