The Silicon Amanuensis: New Economic Realities and the Creative Writer
Steve Beisner -- February 25, 2008
We've all experienced it: a nagging voice at the edge of our consciousness, still faint and incomprehensible, but gradually increasing in volume. We begin to notice a few things, seemingly unrelated. We're sure it all means something, but what? Then: BOOM! Everything changes and we feel foolish for not seeing what was coming. In retrospect it all seems so obvious. In the past I've spoken at writers conferences and written about how technology is changing the creative side of our work and opening new opportunities on the business side. This article looks at an aspect of the Internet that inspires fear in many: the economic devaluation of music, software and literary works.
Warning: I have no answers, only questions. I don't claim to have a clear vision of all the changes in store for the art and the business of writing, but change is definitely in the air, and people are beginning to notice. If you are a professional writer, or aspire to be one, then the changes will effect you.
Way back in March of 1994, John Perry Barlow wrote a provocative article in Wired Magazine which begins with the following lament, sharply felt by more and more creative people today, fourteen years later:
"Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"
The article, The Economy of Ideas, is still on-line today, a fact that is, itself, a testament to change. I was reminded of this piece when my friend, John Lemon, emailed me a pointer to Better Than Free, by Kevin Kelly. Yet another of these bothersome articles can be found on the Wired Magazine website, with the incendiary title of Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.
I'm not going to regurgitate everything of interest to working writers in the three articles mentioned above. Many professional writers are already thinking about John Barlow's question, "How are we going to get paid...?"
The essence of the problem is that the ubiquitous Internet is a giant copy machine and distribution mechanism that is both instantaneous and free of cost. All the copyrights, patents, lawsuits, public threats by publishers, movie studios, etc. can't change the fundamental fact that anyone can reproduce and distribute a variety of creative works with less cost and effort than I've expended writing this sentence.
Of course, awareness of the problem doesn't save the movie studios, recording companies, and publishers from their own stupid behavior. Now they're hoping smart lawyers and some Congressional arm-twisting will come to the rescue: I expect that any day now we'll see music piracy and DVD copying singled out for mandatory capital punishment.
Sorry, Time Warner, but it won't work. Never has, never will. Like water finding it's own level, economic value is determined by the realities of production and distribution. While the cost of producing our novel's manuscript may be astronomical, at least to us, the cost of producing a copy and distributing it is near zero and falling fast. We have to find new ways of getting paid for our art.
From this perspective the recent writers' strike may have been misdirected. It was aimed, to a large extent, in providing writers a share of the profits on the sale of traditional media delivered via the Internet. But clearly the big producers and publishers of movies, books, and music, don't have a clue about what's coming.
What we can be sure of is that the old model of generating large profits by delivering individual copies to individual consumers does not fit the Internet world of cost-free copying and distribution. Reproduction and distribution costs, which underpinned the economic value of a books or pieces of recorded music, is no more. Attempts by publishers to use DRM (Digital Rights Management, aka copy protection) to produce synthetic scarcity has been a spectacular failure. Copies are free. Distribution is free. Copyrights and lawyers will never put this genie back into its 19th century bottle.
As I said, I'm not here to provide answers, only to suggest that new solutions are required. As a hint, I'd suggest meditating on the life and work of a certain Mr. Gillette who figured out how to achieve fame and make a fortune by giving away his greatest invention and savior of all heavily be-whiskered men, the safety razor.
For an example of a writer who has taken these lessons to heart and is actually adjusting to these new realities, I direct you to the web site of the talented and successful writer of more than forty science fiction novels, Michael Stackpole.
I had several (wine enhanced) discussions with Michael at the recent Arizona State University Writers Conference. He is articulate and passionate about the changes that are sending other writers looking for somewhere to hide. Rather than hoping the new economics of publishing will somehow leave him unaffected, Stackpole has developed his own ways to take advantage of the new climate. He leverages the popularity of his conventionally published novels with Internet sales of short stories related to the novels. He gathers articles that he makes available for free (for a limited time!) into for-sale archives delivered by CD. He writes for video games. He and his partner have recently opened up shop on Second Life and are making real-world money in the virtual world.
Though I prefer to work in silence, today, as I pound the keyboard, the strains of Bob Dylan's music intrudes: "... please get out of the way if you can't lend a hand, for the times they are a-changing."
It's the nature of revolutions that some people who were big winners in the past find themselves on the bottom, and some of those who struggled most are suddenly on top. Writers are a creative lot. The economic challenges ahead need to be addressed with the same imagination and determination we bring to our daily work. We are, after all, craftsmen in the world of ideas. We just need to figure out a satisfying plot.
Check Ink Byte soon for the next installment of The Silicon Amanuensis.