Words    Words    Words

Wave 1

Wave 0 was our pre-launch wave. Although the Continuous Coast project is accepting donations from the start, Wave 0 is mostly about collecting early-adopter fans and beginning a viral word of mouth campaign which we can build on later. In Wave 1, we will be launching the central portal to the site and offering a diverse array of content both for free and pay, as well as physical objects for purchase.

Selling Content (Wave 1, Tangible Items)

Today we’re going to talk about selling content online — that is, making any creation available for download for a fee. You might sell books online for download, or issues of virtual magazines as Jim Baen’s Universe does every month (we’ll be addressing the subscription model, also used by that site, in a separate part of this series). You could offer video games for download, artwork like Digital Blasphemy, music files like Magnatune, or many other variations.

In many ways this model is not a truly new one, but represents taking the old models of publishing and translating them onto the Internet. It’s important not to lose sight of the differences, however. For one thing, customers are reluctant to spend as much money for something purely digital — an .mp3 file or a .pdf — as they would for a physical, printed book or CD with liner notes. In fact, it helps to include extras — such as cover art or those liner notes. If it’s appropriate you can include interactive elements or access to other special features which would only be possible online.

In other words, try to help your customers feel like they are getting a good value, either with a reduced price over the physical version, extra features, or both. Experiment with how much content to offer, and of what sort — if it seems like too much to charge $1 for a single short story, consider collecting several stories into a virtual anthology and charging more. Consider selling custom artwork, music, or audio files with your story too — though this may mean sharing the profits with more collaborators, it may also make the content more attractive to your buyers.

Another important issue to address when selling your work online is piracy. Although anything can be pirated, content in digital form is much easier to copy or share than a creative work in more conventional form — anyone who wants to upload the file to a file-sharing network can do so, without even having to go through the trouble of converting it to digital form. While DRM (digital rights management software, or copy protection) is sometimes used, we feel that is more trouble than it is worth: All DRM is eventually broken, it frequently prevents or increases the difficulty of legal use by your fans, and any use of it tends to garner bad publicity.

Instead, it makes more sense to acknowledge that in a digital world people will use your content in all kinds of ways you might or might not intend. The use of a Creative Commons or other open source/open content license can help encourage your fans to play fair in how they use your content; it can also (depending on the license) encourage them to make creative derivative works which will get you more publicity. You can also include a simple notice in your work (for example, on the copyright page of your virtual book or in the liner notes for your album) which says something like, “If you got this from a friend and enjoyed it, please consider visiting our website and donating.”

If fans can choose to get your work on a filesharing site, why would they ever go to you? There are actually many reasons: the convenience of getting all your content in one place, the safety of knowing your files won’t contain viruses, or the reliability of your site versus a slow filesharing network. Of course, this puts some responsibility on you: your files must be virus free, easy to access, and quick to download. In his excellent article, “Better than Free,” author Kevin Kelly discusses eight reasons fans spend money in a post-scarcity digital economy.

While some will still choose to copy your work instead of pay you for it, consider this: they still have that ability even if you don’t make your work available online. We believe it’s better to give them the opportunity to pay you directly. Remember, if you make fans they will want to support you, though they may not feel the same loyalty toward your publisher, the recording industry, etc.

Selling Content Bonus: If it’s appropriate, consider whether you can make fans feel involved while they support you. Do you want to garner their input on what you are making? Or is there an “in character” way to involve them? For example, consider a hypothetical fantasy world at war — perhaps fans are paying to support the purchase of supplies for an exploratory foray into evil enemy territory, in return for which they’ll be given exclusive access to photos, travel writings, video, or even “artifacts” from the expedition. Even when you start by translating the old models, it’s important to consider ways you can adapt them to the new.
Other posts:

• Part 0: Series Announcement
• Part 1: About the Series
• Part 2: The Five W’s
• Part 3: DMAIC
• Part 4: 4 Simple Steps
• Part 5: Time Vs. Money
• Part 6: Waves
• Part 7: Donations
• Part 8: Dividing Donations
• Part 9: Managing Contributions
• Part 10: Donating Whuffie
• Part 11: 1,000 True Fans
  

The Artist Business Models series is based on a paper written by Reesa Brown and Kit O’Connell, with assistance from Steven Brust, Ken Brown, Deborah Ibarra, and many others. At the close of the series, the entire business model paper will be posted to Continuous Labs. The business model paper and blog posts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 license.