Free Content!
Chris Bell, of NZBC fame, has put up on his website his stories and poems. He talks at length about why is allowing people to access it for free, even though he also commercially derives income from the content. Lots and lots of great reading there.
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Tags: New Zealand
May 8th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
When personal dreams of a brave new world meet business, or in his case his ‘manifesto’ it ends in tears.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Would you care to elaborate, Horace, on my “personal dreams of a brave new world”? Since you’re the one with the publishing business brain around here, what do you predict is going to happen? Is a horrid MSM person going to jump on my sandcastles? Or take one of my stories and publish it without paying for it? (tinyurl.com/ysqaha – see the note at the end of the story.) And the difference would be…? Either way, it seems I have nothing to lose. But thanks, anyway, for your heartfelt concern.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:11 am
OK, my previous reply to Horace’s comment, which I thought had been lost, has since appeared. I might as well post this one, as well…
Was it Thomas Mann or another German who defined a writer as someone for whom writing was difficult?
I don’t have any such thing as “personal dreams of a brave new world” when it comes to my fiction. I just about make a living from writing – largely business work for corporate and publishing clients – and I honestly think the two (fact and fiction, if you like) can co-exist. You have to be a pragmatist to write these days. Premium content works if you’re the Economist, but why would I try to restrict access to my stories any more than I would to my blog? If one person reads something on my site and likes it enough to order a book, it has served its purpose. The reader, ultimately, counts. My site is just a vehicle for these words while someone else is paying for others. It’s a business model creative people have been using for centuries, and that’s probably the only sense in which I see it as being flawed.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:12 am
OK, my previous reply to Horace’s comment, which I thought had been lost, has since appeared. I might as well post this one, as well…
Was it Thomas Mann or another German who defined a writer as someone for whom writing was difficult?
I don’t have any such thing as “personal dreams of a brave new world” when it comes to my fiction. I just about make a living from writing – largely business work for corporate and publishing clients – and I honestly think the two (fact and fiction, if you like) can co-exist. You have to be a pragmatist to write these days. Premium content works if you’re the Economist, but why would I try to restrict access to my stories any more than I would to my blog? If one person reads something on my site and likes it enough to order a book, it has served its purpose. The reader, ultimately, counts. My site is just a vehicle for these words while someone else is paying for others. It’s a business model creative people have been using for centuries, and that’s probably the only sense in which I see it as being flawed.
May 26th, 2007 at 5:47 am
a bad job
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:07 am
Singer Rihanna is dominating the UK pop music scene after reaching number one in both the singles and album charts…