Barry Diller Is A Myth

from the as-much-as-free-content,-at-least dept

Barry Diller has apparently declared that "free content is a myth." Good thing you can read about it -- for free -- online. A little suggestion: it helps not to declare something a myth when it's already a fact and already widespread. But, just to see how it works, I'm calling Barry Diller a myth. That's about as accurate as calling free content a myth -- but if he can get away with it, I should be able to also, right?

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How Does Offering Free Content Insult Those Who Pay?

from the help-me-out-here dept

It's interesting to see the logical pretzels that certain business execs will twist themselves into to defend a poor business model against one that customers enjoy much more. Take for example, the claim from cable firm Rainbow Media's CEO, Josh Sapan, that free video online somehow "insults" people who pay for cable:

"I do think it's important to be technologically progressive and responsive to what consumers want. But that's a different thing, in my mind, from creating bad habits," Sapan said in an interview. "To offer these shows for free ... It's almost insulting to the consumer who's paying money for it, because it says to that consumer, 'What are you doing?'"

Of course you could make the identical argument for any obsolete product. The telephone apparently "insulted" telegraphy purchasers. The airplane apparently "insulted" those who traveled by boat across the ocean. The printing press? Man, did that ever insult those monks who wrote out bibles by hand.

Honestly, it's yet another sign of the entitlement culture, where some seem to assume they're entitled to keep their business model, and it's somehow "insulting" to show their customers that there are better/cheaper/more efficient ways to get what they need.

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Best Selling Author Actively Pirating His Own Book -- Finds It Helps Sales Tremendously

from the the-benefits-of-free dept

We've been seeing more and more examples lately of content creators recognizing how they benefit from giving away their content for free. What's most amusing, however, is that every time we point out an example, people work extra hard explaining why that case is a special case. When we discussed less-well-known musicians giving away music, we were told that it would never work for megastars. When we discussed megastars giving away music, we were told it would never work for indie musicians. The same is true in other areas as well. When we recently wrote about an author giving his book away for free, someone angrily emailed to let us know that this only made sense because no one had ever heard of that author -- so it was purely a promotional effort by a new author.

Yet, apparently, it also works for well-known authors. TorrentFreak points us to the news that Paulo Coelho is such a fan of giving his book away for free that he's even set up his own blog called Pirate Coehlo where he points to where you can download various translations of his best selling book The Alchemist. Coelho explained all of this in a recent talk he gave:

Link: sevenload.com What Coelho quickly discovered was that the more his book was available for free, the more sales of the actual book increased. As an example, he cites the Russian translation of his book, where it went from only 1,000 sales to well over 100,000 in a period of two years, and has only continued to grow since then. It's yet another good example of someone embracing how giving away content for free can help them earn more money. And, it highlights (again) that, whether you're well known or a nobody, you can use these tactics to your advantage.

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Journalist Still Thinks Newspapers Should Collude To Stop Giving Away Free Content

from the learn-some-economics dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus had a ridiculous set of proposals for "saving" the newspaper industry. He wanted all newspapers to collude together and agree to stop putting content online for free and, in addition, to sue anyone who linked to the newspaper sites without paying a licensing fee. To appease him, we refused to even link to his column. Since then, the Chronicle has parted ways with Lazarus, who has made his way south to the LA Times, where he's basically written the same column (yeah, this time we'll link -- let's see if he sues). His argument is basically: "I have no idea what a good business model for the industry is, so why not use my really, really bad one!" He uses some high school students as a device in the column, basically mocking them for not wanting to pay for news online. He goes on to complain that "blogs" will somehow destroy newspapers by publishing so much junk that it "will be too blurry to discern" good journalism from junk. This is a common line from folks who think that if it's in a newspaper, it must be "good journalism" and if it's on a blog, it must be junk. There are so many examples of why that's wrong, it's not even worth pointing out how silly a statement that is (and the fact that it's published in a newspaper pretty much disproves the point anyway). There is plenty of good journalism found in both newspapers and on blogs -- just as there is plenty of junk found on both. And saying that people can't tell the difference is suggesting that your audience is really dumb. Next thing you know, Lazarus will sign up in support of the idea that bloggers should be credentialed.

But the bigger point is that Lazarus insists that since digital advertising revenue remains a small percentage of newspaper revenue, it means that it can't support a newsroom. This is clueless on a number of different points. First, it's using a snapshot view of a very dynamic world. Digital revenues are growing at a rapid clip, as there are both more readers and more advertisers buying online ads. Compare that to the pace (and direction) of growth for traditional newspaper revenue... and suddenly the digital realm doesn't look so bad. Second, it assumes (incorrectly) that online ads are the sole source of revenue. As plenty of other newspapers are discovering, if you stop focusing so much on being "newspapers" and start realizing that what you deliver needs to change as the market has changed, you'll find that there are plenty of ways to afford to pay journalists -- and in some cases, they'll even be able to make significantly more than before. Of course, you'd expect that sort of analysis not to come from some junk blog, but from a "real" journalist. So why is it the other way?

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