Selling intellectual property has changed radically in the last thirty years.\u00a0 We used to buy books at a book store.\u00a0 We bought music at a record shop.\u00a0 And we rented or bought movies at a video store.\u00a0 And then we bought all these at a Walmart or an electronics store (well, maybe not the books).<\/p>\n
Now we stream movies and pay by the minute or the month and listen to music more or less for free and books are just this thing that exists on Amazon as a free service or a minor expense.\u00a0 And the marketing and advertising of these works is some inexplicable algorithm that somehow links up people to the things that would appeal to them.<\/p>\n
Now, the only way a musician can make any money is by live concerts that people pay to attend.\u00a0 But no one would pay to attend a reading of a chapter of a book.\u00a0 So maybe very soon books will cease to exist as a commodity.<\/p>\n
And I guess that\u2019s just the way it will be.\u00a0 Now I\u2019ve been trying to finish up a novel (and fixing the last ten percent of the book has been much harder than writing the first ninety percent).\u00a0 And when I attempt to market it, I\u2019ll try it on some traditional publishers and if that doesn\u2019t work, I\u2019ll probably self-publish it on Amazon.\u00a0 I have noticed that lately some authors try to start a \u201cgo fund me\u201d campaign to drum up the support for the book before it\u2019s released.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure how that would work for a new author.<\/p>\n
I guess pretty soon I\u2019ll know as much about it as anyone else.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t it interesting that now that technology allows for avoiding all the obstacles that the \u201cgatekeepers\u201d of traditional publishing provided, that the real problem would be the \u201cneedle in a haystack\u201d reality of many millions of self-published books thrown together in an endless slush pile with no way to stand out to a jaded reading public.<\/p>\n
Well, they say that Americans have always made the best salesmen.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t surprise me to find out that self-promotion is the real talent behind entertainment.\u00a0 Hollywood was successful because they could get millions of eyes on their product.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure the same applies to selling books, movies and music.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that it\u2019s a field I never got involved in.\u00a0 Engineering is product that has to be sold but I was always just the product.\u00a0 I was never one of the sellers except when I would be sent out with the marketing team to convince the buyers that we knew what we were doing and could provide them with the services and hardware that they wanted.\u00a0 Books on the other hand need fancy covers with somewhat-undressed women and weapons of war and starships to attract the buyer\u2019s attention and get him to plunk down his electronic money.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen some marketing going on by some of the people I follow on X and YouTube and it all feels very tiring but maybe that\u2019s because at heart I\u2019m a very lazy guy and hawking product is hard work (at least for me).<\/p>\n
And maybe this is all a transitory situation and eventually some more efficient way to link readers with new books that match their tastes will appear among the AI gods.<\/p>\n
Well, just some musings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Selling intellectual property has changed radically in the last thirty years.\u00a0 We used to buy books at a book store.\u00a0 We bought music at a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[1290,4801],"class_list":["post-34211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-my-fiction","tag-traditional-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\n