Journal Entry
Creative commons as a book release strategy
April 2nd 2007 at 9:38 pm
Simon Owens over at Bloggasm has interviewed Nick Mamatas and Peter Watts for their thoughts on book promotion and releasing your book as creative commons.
Interesting article which looks at the various ins and outs.
And though both authors reached relative success after they used the CC license, they were skeptical of its overall ability to sell books.
“So what happens when this catches on?” Watts said. “What happens when everybody releases their work through a Creative Commons licence? Then it’s no longer newsworthy, and while it will certainly continue to make my work more accessible to people who already know of my existence, it certainly won’t lure in any new readers the way the Blindsight campaign has done. It’s a niche strategy, in other words. It only works as long as most artists aren’t doing it– and as long as that’s the case, I’d certainly consider releasing my future books under a CC license.”
[Link ganked via Scalzi]
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1. Steve Buchheit on Apr 3rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
I think this ties into the advertising concepts of coupons. The article starts with the presumption of the “golden key” to sales and examines if a CC release is that key. While there are many, especially young people, in advertising that also believe in that “golden key” concept (do this, and the product will sell sell sell, and you’ll be rich rich rich), it’s a false business plan (there’s a little of this with the discussion on getting a mention on BoingBoing). CC can be used to generate interest, but only if people know about your release. That interest can then be translated into sales, but only if the product is matched to those who you’ve peddled to with your “interest hook.” That is, I could advertise and discount blue shirts to where I’m selling at cost, but if the market I’m selling to doesn’t want blue shirts, I’m SOL. Now, if the market is nuetral toward blue shirts, I can make a dent and sell them. If the market really likes blue shirts, but you priced the shirts too high, you’ll get the sales on the discount, but then not for next year’s blue shirts (until they’re on sale too). What needs happen is to market to the people who have a propensity to buy blue shirts, and then sell them as many as they want, in a style they want, for a markup that makes it worthwhile, but without pricing yourself out of the market. At that point it becomes a “quality of the materials/feeling about the sale” that will determine if you sell blue shirts next year.