Comments on: Is short fiction devalued by being available for free?

By: tycho garen

tycho garen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:27:42 +0000

I prefer to thing that a rising tide lifts all boats and that, more than anything what we’re seeing isn’t a so much an erosion of quality, but an explosion of quantity…

By: Jason Stoddard

Jason Stoddard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:37:27 +0000

Fiction distributed freely does not devalue fiction; it returns it to its natural market value.

Publishers have been working on a scarcity-based economic model since, well, there were publishers. In the past, this scarcity was real: there were a limited number of organizations on the planet which had the talent could select quality fiction, the capital to mass-produce it, and the distribution network to ship, stock, and display it.

Today, publishers can be limited only by their ability to select quality fiction and monetize it; online distribution is (nearly) free. The sticky part is, of course, how you monetize something that is freely available. Online audiences have universally vetoed pay-walls, and it’s exceedingly difficult to attract enough eyeballs to make ad-supported publishing work.

And yet, at the same time, Netflix is having some success moving people to an all-you-can-eat online viewing system (albeit DRMed up the wazoo), the SciFi Channel is finding sponsors for its ad-supported, full-length online episodes, and there are some odd datapoints in the ad-supported spectrum, such as BoingBoing and io9. None of these hit the “traditional” prose science fiction market, though.

And that, I think, is where it gets interesting. The inherent value of short fiction is very low, mainly because the market is very small–*not because we have failed in creating artificial scarcity.*

Which makes the interesting question this: How do we *grow the audience* to tap into some of the millions who think Galactica graphic novels are the height of science fiction?

By: Tom Marcinko

Tom Marcinko — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:35:02 +0000

An analogy to the music industry seems to want to be made.

I was introduced to a lot of my current favorite artists through free downloads, and I’ve gone on to buy their CDs or pay for downloads through eMusic or iTunes. My life is better for having the New Pornographers, the National, the Fiery Furnaces, and Ryan Adams in it. Where was I going to hear them? The radio?

OTOH, I’ve downloaded a lot of stuff by artists who left my lukewarm or colder, and I never bought anything by them. Presumably somebody else did. I hope that’s the case, ’cause from what I can see the music industry makes publishing seem like an oasis of serene rationality.

On my desk now are freebies by Will McIntosh, Cory Doctorow, Ken McLeod, and others. I’ve bought books by most of these people and the ones I haven’t gotten to, I probably will.

I’m sure the analogy breaks down at some point. Even Stephen King got disappointing results from posting fiction online (albeit not for free).

But I can’t help but think that the loss-leader model would only help SF magazines, which aren’t having the best of times.

By: Robert Koslover

Robert Koslover — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:42:08 +0000

Short fiction offers value to the reader whether it is provided for free or not. But it is difficult to charge much for it in the free marketplace simply because the supply is huge and the demand does not match it. I don’t think it is too much of an exaggeration to say that the number of fiction writers (especially aspiring writers) now approaches, or even exceeds, the number of fiction readers (especially for SF). Rather than lament this reality, let us honor those who labor endlessly to write fiction for us all to enjoy, yet who have little realistic hope of financial reward. This work is done for love and art, not money. To those aspiring writers out there, let me say this: keep your day job, but keep writing too. And thank you for working to brighten our world.

By: Liviu

Liviu — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:56:08 +0000

Actually for me online availability increased my sff magazine purchases because a lot of new ones like GUD, Aeon, Escape Velocity, Grantville Gazette appeared – I buy only e editions and I bought about 12-15 e-magazines in the past year – of the traditional 4 which are all available e, not that it will stop them wasting away slowly since their problems especially at the 3 US ones is ossification, I bought one e-issue of Interzone, but overall I find them more and more irrelevant because they publish the same authors over and over

I rarely read free fiction just because it’s free – if I find an author I like or hear about a story, yes I would check that out but otherwise I just do not have the time. I prefer spending 1-6$ on selected e-magazines to peruse them at my leisure since the odds are much better I will enjoy at least several stories if not all. Drip publishing, one or two stories at a time does not cut it with me by and large.

Ironically the one place free online stuff impacted purchases is in news, reviews, upcoming books, where places like this, review blog, forums, made Locus at which I used to subscribe to lose added value and justify the subscription…