The Writer of the Future(books.substack.com)
books.substack.com
The Writer of the Future
https://books.substack.com/p/notebook-the-writer-of-the-future
17 comments
Book Post here. Thanks for giving us some thought! Agree, $45 subscription is a lift. Upside: Overhead is low & I don’t need a mass readership to make it work. The New York Review of Books and the New Yorker were built on an “aspirational” audience of people not necessarily seriously into books but wanting to keep up with culture in an approachable/manageable way. Would love to have enough readers to charge less. Isn’t there something between business reporting and “filler” that is a social good? Like, just because teachers don’t have the market leverage to earn millions, doesn’t mean we don’t want their salaries set at a level that attracts qualified people and makes the profession sustainable...
Interesting.
But they want $45 for a one-year subscription to get book reviews. I have a hard time parsing that. Maybe if I were seriously into literary matters. Also, I can't see what forms of payment they accept, unless I provide an email address. Probably not Bitcoin, I'm guessing.
But they want $45 for a one-year subscription to get book reviews. I have a hard time parsing that. Maybe if I were seriously into literary matters. Also, I can't see what forms of payment they accept, unless I provide an email address. Probably not Bitcoin, I'm guessing.
> Maybe if I were seriously into literary matters.
Like the subscribers to the London Review of Books ($49 US / year), the New York Review of Books ($89 US / year), or the LA Review of Books? ($100 US / year for a quarterly, if I'm not mistaken).
There are lots of people who are serious enough about books to pay these kinds of prices, and the price they're asking is around market (though maybe a little high for digital only).
My question is this: Are they as good as these other very famous publications?
Like the subscribers to the London Review of Books ($49 US / year), the New York Review of Books ($89 US / year), or the LA Review of Books? ($100 US / year for a quarterly, if I'm not mistaken).
There are lots of people who are serious enough about books to pay these kinds of prices, and the price they're asking is around market (though maybe a little high for digital only).
My question is this: Are they as good as these other very famous publications?
Book post here! I worked at the NY Review of Bks for 30 years. One thing we heard over & over is that the issues pile up and no one has time to read them. Trying to develop a model that fits into modern life, makes people feel plugged in, not guilty. Looking not to compete with the old lions but offer something different.
Book Post here! We need an email address because we're a newsletter. Process payments through Stripe. Thanks for having a look!
I'm still catching up on the last ( glances over at the three-volume Lichtheim ) 5000ish years of literature. I don't expect to be even half done before I'm dead. I can't imagine wanting or needing to know about new releases so badly I'd pay to receive frequent book reviews, unless I were in the industry.
[EDIT] also the author's misunderstood some things here:
> Information, said the pioneers of digital reading, wants to be free.
> [....]
> the axiom that information means to be free determined that the economy of digital media would be based on advertising.
That's not really what that meant, and whatever actual dedication to information freedom that's manifested in tech circles has nothing whatsoever to do with advertising taking over the web.
[EDIT] also the author's misunderstood some things here:
> Information, said the pioneers of digital reading, wants to be free.
> [....]
> the axiom that information means to be free determined that the economy of digital media would be based on advertising.
That's not really what that meant, and whatever actual dedication to information freedom that's manifested in tech circles has nothing whatsoever to do with advertising taking over the web.
Yeah, that jump surprised me too.
I clearly remember the first online ads. And there was nothing ideological about it.
I clearly remember the first online ads. And there was nothing ideological about it.
Isn’t the point here that it was the path the free information ideology inadvertently produced: (free) information served with ads (because everyone needs butter on the bread)? And because of that ingrained ideology, it’s still difficult to charge for the actual information product?
Edit: missing word
Edit: missing word
That ideology had nothing to do with the use of spying coupled with advertising ("targeted ads" in their modern sense) causing the creation of rents-seeking monopolies in the online ads space. The tech that enabled that was really just a few things (Javascript that could make and modify requests while also being able to hook into various user-generated events being a huge one, though not the only one) and I don't think many or any of those were developed for the purposes of information freedom or whatever, in particular.
And anyway "information wants to be free" is more descriptive than it is ideological. It's a statement about what tends to happen to information. Cheap Internet access and cheap storage have changed how that works so much that it's qualitatively different from the previous status quo ("the medium is the message") but the tech creating that would've probably looked pretty similar regardless of whether the inventors thought it was wrong to pay for information (which I doubt most did anyway).
[EDIT] TL;DR: "information wants to be free" isn't a statement about the ethics of charging money for information, and the reasons that advertising won on the web and the reasons monopolies took those over rather than even small or midsized publications being able to continue getting by with their own ad sales desk wouldn't have anything to do with anyone subscribing to that notion anyway. It's an entirely incorrect association.
And anyway "information wants to be free" is more descriptive than it is ideological. It's a statement about what tends to happen to information. Cheap Internet access and cheap storage have changed how that works so much that it's qualitatively different from the previous status quo ("the medium is the message") but the tech creating that would've probably looked pretty similar regardless of whether the inventors thought it was wrong to pay for information (which I doubt most did anyway).
[EDIT] TL;DR: "information wants to be free" isn't a statement about the ethics of charging money for information, and the reasons that advertising won on the web and the reasons monopolies took those over rather than even small or midsized publications being able to continue getting by with their own ad sales desk wouldn't have anything to do with anyone subscribing to that notion anyway. It's an entirely incorrect association.
Right. Ads don't generate substantial income for the book authors. And TFA actually complains about that, as the context for bringing up the supposed flow from "information wants to be free" to ads.
But now that I think of it, ads do reflect the fact that "information wants to be free". But in this case, it's information about users, which gets monetized through behavioral advertising markets.
But now that I think of it, ads do reflect the fact that "information wants to be free". But in this case, it's information about users, which gets monetized through behavioral advertising markets.
Yeah my point is just that 1) "information wants to be free" is an observation more than a statement of purpose, and 2) I don't think fighting against dirty ol' authors who are trying to charge for their work was on anyone's mind, more or less, when designing the technologies under the modern Web. The way things shook out was some combination of an accident and inevitable. I doubt many or any of them thought charging money for, say, books or magazines was a bad thing. That's just... not what any of this is about.
Even if the Free Software movement (which I think is what she's trying to get at?) sometimes bleeds over into other areas, its ideological roots are in retaining user control of software in particular because software's a tool, not keeping people from charging money for novels or history books or newspaper articles or whatever.
[EDIT] that is, actual ideological informational-freedom anarchists—that is, not just opportunistic pirates—are rare and aren't and have never been in power to any substantial degree, even in the software world. The whole premise of that part is a big misunderstanding.
Even if the Free Software movement (which I think is what she's trying to get at?) sometimes bleeds over into other areas, its ideological roots are in retaining user control of software in particular because software's a tool, not keeping people from charging money for novels or history books or newspaper articles or whatever.
[EDIT] that is, actual ideological informational-freedom anarchists—that is, not just opportunistic pirates—are rare and aren't and have never been in power to any substantial degree, even in the software world. The whole premise of that part is a big misunderstanding.
Well, as an old-school "ideological informational-freedom anarchist", "information wants to be free" for me was always mostly about the Internet as a workaround against censorship, and domination via propaganda.
Book Post here! If you listen to the Lanier interview, or read his recent books, he spells out the connection between free internet and the advertising model. I’m not a tech person, but it was my experience that in the 90s there was very little support for building revenue models into how people receive digital information. Those who were betting on the digital economy and building the monopolies we have now understood that their earnings would come from monetizing user information. “Advertising” is a shorthand for this. If fighting against authors wasn’t on people’s mind when they were building the web, they weren’t thinking ahead. The outcome has been that there is no solid mechanism hitching revenue to those who generate intellectual property.
> The outcome has been that there is no solid mechanism hitching revenue to those who generate intellectual property.
But how could there be? With 1985-2000 tech, and remembering how pretty much every DRM scheme so far's either failed miserably or been so invasive and flakey that it'd never have been accepted for mass media, and that even the failures have made "legitimate" products worse than their pirated counterparts. We have subscriptions—that hasn't helped much. We can very effectively gate off pages from those we don't want to see them.
It's not Information Freedom folks trying to stick it to those who want to charge money for writing any more than the record industry was trying to weaken the social value of semi-skilled music-playing family and friends. Both happened but that wasn't the point, it's just how things shook out.
I'm very open to arguments that either of those was bad and maybe even that their harm isn't made up for by the benefits the two technologies provide, but to whatever extent the Web is anti-author or anti-creator it's not some conspiracy (in the usual sense—I don't mean that as a slight) but just what it is. The printing press hurt some people. Recorded music hurt some people. Film and talkies hurt some people. I don't think anyone developing film audio recording & sync technology, or even those involved in its use, were much interested in harming a bunch of silent film actors per se, right? But how would you even develop that tech without doing so? You'd make it way different and much worse somehow, I guess, if it could be done at all. Same here.
But how could there be? With 1985-2000 tech, and remembering how pretty much every DRM scheme so far's either failed miserably or been so invasive and flakey that it'd never have been accepted for mass media, and that even the failures have made "legitimate" products worse than their pirated counterparts. We have subscriptions—that hasn't helped much. We can very effectively gate off pages from those we don't want to see them.
It's not Information Freedom folks trying to stick it to those who want to charge money for writing any more than the record industry was trying to weaken the social value of semi-skilled music-playing family and friends. Both happened but that wasn't the point, it's just how things shook out.
I'm very open to arguments that either of those was bad and maybe even that their harm isn't made up for by the benefits the two technologies provide, but to whatever extent the Web is anti-author or anti-creator it's not some conspiracy (in the usual sense—I don't mean that as a slight) but just what it is. The printing press hurt some people. Recorded music hurt some people. Film and talkies hurt some people. I don't think anyone developing film audio recording & sync technology, or even those involved in its use, were much interested in harming a bunch of silent film actors per se, right? But how would you even develop that tech without doing so? You'd make it way different and much worse somehow, I guess, if it could be done at all. Same here.
Thank you for your reply! I don’t mean to point fingers, just trying to look at the structure. The built-in incentives and pace of technological advance pushed digital communication toward consolidation and estrangement of revenues from creators. It looks from this side like, had Google and Facebook not developed an overwhelming advantage in the acquisition of user data, advertising would still be generating value for newsrooms and that would be going to writers. Had Amazon not used predatory pricing to undermine competition (bookstores) and merchants (publishers), Bezos might be less rich but we might have a competitive online retail market that returned more value to the source. It seems possible that an idealistic vision of the benefit of open communications might have clouded from view the dangers posed by hinging revenue to the collection of user data (the ease of spreading disinformation, the decoupling of revenue from content creation). Funding businesses and technologies that collected revenue (easily, unobtrusively) from users might have led to a more healthy, democratic, transparent digital environment. Not trying to look back and place blame, just understand causes and imagine a constructive future. Welcome a more informed understanding!
The two profitable price-quality points are:
- Cheap content for the masses (lowest common denominator, ad supported)
- Deep content for the vested (at a high price point)
"The middle" graces you with:
- High cost to produce (research, depth, diction)
- Limited audience
- Zero willingness to pay
A writer demanding the world take them seriously is the last step on the way down.... performance begets entitlement, not the reverse. There are critical writers in the business world: those who write landing pages, build core content, drive desirable activity. They are often very well paid and - in the event they aren't - are frequently positioned to go out on their own as an independent publisher. It's the ones that write what in retrospect was the filler who tend to complain....