"Big Publishing's Worst Nightmare" 328
"The average writer is really more interested in writing than the transaction part of the process."
-- Jack Romanos, President/COO of Simon & Schuster, quoted in NYT"We're confident that publishers add enough value to the process that authors are still going to want to use them."
-- Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, quoted by AP"My friends, we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare."
-- Stephen King"Looks like the future of publishing to me."
-- Bruce Schneier
We've had a few people submit this news item, describing it as "shareware." It's not. This is shareware with a bite attached, something else entirely. What King is doing is a real-world test of the Street Performer's Protocol.
The SPP is a proposal for artists to make money without retaining any control over their work (since, on the net, copyright is rapidly being rendered irrelevant). Here's the paper by Kelsey and Schneier if you'd like to get all the technical details.
But the bottom line is that Stephen King is never going to have to publish the end of his novel.
Readers aren't going to send in a flood of cash and money orders (!) -- that's a given -- envelopes and addresses are a hassle. Luckily for him, he's brokered a deal with Amazon to accept credit cards, which is pretty sweet considering that most places won't even look at $1 credit card charges -- too much overhead. (My guess would be that Amazon is doing this as a loss leader to get the attention and signups. That won't work forever. Amazon PR didn't return my phone call by press time.)
But the real problem is that King demands that 75% of his readers be honest. That'll never happen.
Kelsey and Schneier's original SPP proposed thoughtfully that authors ask for a flat fee: say, $100,000 for a novel. If the majority of an author's readers never pay, that's fine: as long as the remaining minority is large enough (or rich enough) to collectively make the payment. (If not enough pay, the money stays in escrow and then reverts to its owners.)
King's terms make the question one of relative loyalty, not absolute popularity. He's not offering a transaction with his readers -- he's testing them. And the test is guaranteed to fail.
What he's proposing is a Prisoner's Dilemma played between thousands of people. Because of the large nature of the game, the actual statistical "profit" returned by sending in your dollar is a tiny fraction of the enjoyment you'd get from reading the third installment that King would post. Your payoff matrix looks like:
Novel Released Novel Not Released Cooperate
(pay $1)Get $10 reading enjoyment for $1, profit: $9 $-1 Defect
(pay $0)Get $10 reading enjoyment for free, profit: $10 $0
No matter what happens, you do better by not sending in your dollar. (It's fair to ignore the infinitesimal chance that your single dollar will be the one to hit the 75% mark.)
Of course there are other considerations (can you sleep at night knowing you cheated Stephen King out of a dollar?) but for the most part, people will weigh these options and decide they're not going to pay.
And once you start thinking that you're not going to pay, you realize that many others won't either, and it starts to look even more like throwing money down a drain. Vicious cycle.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is only interesting if the same players play together over and over. What we have here is a "one-shot" game, and in such a game the only rational strategy is to defect. Unfortunately, if everyone behaves rationally, we all merely break even (and the novel never comes out); if only we were a little more irrational we'd all make a profit of nine dollars - or however much King's story was worth to us.
Douglas Hofstadter ran an experiment for Scientific American in June 1983, asking twenty friends to play a similar one-shot Dilemma. Even though Hofstadter's was profit-only, no chance of losing money, and even though participants knew their choices would be reported in a national magazine, his cooperation rate was only 30%.
I predict King's return rate will be something like 15%. Maybe it will go as much as twice as high, thanks to his deal with Amazon to let people use credit cards -- much more convenient.
The disappointing thing is that two months from now he's going to announce that the experiment has failed and then either drop the novel, or keep writing it out of the kindness of his heart. Either way, the press is going to report that this new distribution method is a crock. Which is a shame because it only needs to be done right.
First of all, the percentage thing needs to go. King doesn't write for the satisfaction of knowing that he has honest readers. He writes to make money.
I suspect King is too used to thinking in terms of royalties, hoping for a good-sized slice of those unpredictably large pies he bakes. He might not know which novel will be the runaway best-seller that will make ten times the money he'd hoped for.
My advice to him would be to relax; don't try to look for the gravy train. You're on the internet now, that won't work. Set a price for your time -- an obscenely high price, to be sure, you're one of the world's most popular writers -- and be content with what you get. When contributions hit that number, release the book.
Second, invite readers to contribute as much as they like toward the novel. For some, a dollar; for real fans, ten dollars or more. Let us decide how much it's worth to us.
Third, hold contributions in escrow until the novel is released, and if the limit is not reached by a certain time, give us our money back. As a contributor, this makes my cost negligible, and changes my payoff matrix to, let's say...
Price Reached Price Not Reached Cooperate
(pay $3)Get $10 reading enjoyment for $3, profit: $7 Get my $3 back: $0 Defect
(pay $0)Get $10 reading enjoyment for free, profit: $10 $0
This way, there's no risk; the worst-case scenario is that I lose some time and energy at the mailbox. It's a win-win situation, and I'm much more likely to play.
If Stephen King wants to craft a real nightmare for Big Publishing, that's the plot he needs to use.
(P.S. If you're interested in reading more about the Prisoner's Dilemma, I've assembled a few references -- and thoughts -- at thedilemma.org. See in particular Hofstadter, pp. 740ff., re the one-shot PD.)
(P.P.S. Updated 90 minutes later. I had this link to "the download" up in the top paragraph, but took it out because some people didn't realize it led straight to the pay-me-a-dollar PDF file. Sorry; that's why the link is down here now. If you read it and want to pay your dollar, you can probably figure out to visit stephenking.com, eh?)
Re:third parties...instant runoff voting (Score:2)
As for third parties, it's really another dynamic--the fact that voting your third-party favorite ends up helping the guy you hate the most. This can be fixed with instant runoff voting [igc.org]: You pick your first choice, second, third, etc. Count up all the first-choice votes. If no one gets over 50%, eliminate the candidate with the least, take all the people who voted for him as first-choice, and count their second-choice votes. Continue until one candidate has over 50%.
This way if, say, you like Keyes and hate Gore, you can vote for Keyes first, Bush second, and Gore last. You don't abandon your first choice just because the media says he can't win, but if he doesn't win it's just like you voted for Bush.
HEY! FIX THE LINK or the project won't work at all (Score:2)
Re:Heh. (Score:3)
King doesn't write great fiction. It does follow a formula, like most traditional stories and most of the rest of fiction. People like it. They don't become Better People through it. Sorry.
I mean, I can appreciate difficult literature. But I enjoy traditional literature with traditional formulas more -- and so do most people. Not everyone likes King's formula, but a lot of sci-fi and almost all fantasy is from a formula.
King writes to a formula and he does it pretty well. He doesn't jerk people around. He gives them their hamburger.
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Re:READ THIS (Score:2)
So he could post his book at +2?
Now I'm confused...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Deviations from protocol (Score:5)
- No chance of getting back your donation if the author decides not to publish - as has already been pointed out in this thread, presumably your money belongs to King whether or not he actually publishes the last third of his book. The protocol calls for this money to revert back to the donor.
- Not public domain - King is restricting resale of his novel. This is a bit silly in the context of the protocol. The point of the public-domain phase is to get the work distributed as much as possible, so that many people are exposed to it, maximizing the number who donate.
- No hash - The protocol calls for a cryptographic hash of the work to be published, so that its integrity may be verified when it reaches the public eye. This one's perhaps excusable; King is an established author and we trust him enough to let him write the last third of the book after he gets all the donations in. It wouldn't work at all for a no-name author trying to make a mark, though.
- Not a flat rate - This is the killer. King is implicitly assuming by providing a percentage that he'll be able to track how many people are reading the book. Ain't going to happen. Inevitably, mirrors will spring up, and every download from a mirror is essentially $0.75 right out of King's pocket. If he really wants to get into the spirit of this experiment, he should give up all hopes of controlling or tracking the myriad copies of his novel, and a flat rate on donations is the only way to truly dissociate himself from the old-media ideas of control.
This really is the future of publishing, and King has been known for bold experiments in the past (he wrote the Bachman books, including the novella The Running Man [imdb.com], under a pseudonym as an attempt to determine whether his stardom was an accident.) Hopefully with a little fine-tuning, he can lead the way for more authors using the Protocol to distribute their works.Re:Please... (Score:2)
Then there could be some nasty hacker out there who will just set up a perl-script to download the thing a million times, to throw off the stats. All it would take is one jerk-wad to blow it for all the honest folks out there.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Slashdot doesn't promote the honor system. (Score:2)
Anyways, Slashdot should link to the download page [stephenking.com] only. By direct linking, people are missing out on the importance of the honor system that King has set up.
Joseph Elwell.
The exciting part of this... (Score:2)
Yes, Jamie, it probably won't work. But can you imagine if it did? Finally, you could create a virtual library that wouldn't be castrated by copyright laws.
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Re:WTF, slashdot? (Score:2)
Metaliking (Score:4)
Then, they'll add a bass guitar track and see how many people pays a dollar and download it.
If this is successfull, they'll add a guitar track and see how many people pays a dollar to download it.
And if THAT is successfull, they'll add the lyrics track and see how much people they'll have coned into paying four bucks a song.
And Blow It They Should (Score:2)
True street performers have no guarantee whatsoever that they will cash in regardless of whether or not they succeed in entertaining passers-by. Why should SKing have such a guarantee?
He can refuse to put out the final chapters if he so desires, so he has created an 'experiment' in which HE can't lose. Regardless of what happens he get's lot's of press and his happy little footnote in Internet history. I'm supposed to be impressed? I'm supposed to cheer the man on? F*CK THAT!
Repeat, F*CK THAT!
The only one being served here is Stephen King. Forgive me if I don't weep for joy as he 'sticks it to the Man' by sticking it to his readers, most of whom are undoubtedly loyal enough to fuel his fantasy with their cash.
Put the WHOLE thing out there with "Please Feel Free To Send Tips To:" info and LIVE or DIE by your little experiment.
Great idea... But what about Amazon Boycott!!! (Score:2)
However, Stephen King is only working with Amazon [amazon.com] to rake in funds for his novel, and that conflicts with the boycott called upon amazon [slashdot.org].
What to do... :-(
donfede
The Stephen King Public License... (Score:5)
2. Not to print extra copies and sell them to your friends. If you want to print copies and give them away, I can't stop you (in fact I can't stop you from doing anything, which is the beauty of this thing-think of it as web-moshing). But don't sell them. Two reasons: first, it's against the law, and second, it's nasty behavior. Respect my copyright. As a writer, it's all I've got.
It's not the standard legalese agreement, and it gets right to the SPIRIT of the other licenses out there from the GPL and others. This is a Good Thing (tm), and I'm for the theory that is consumer driven, and not prisoner driven - ie, I want to see more books released like this - cheaply, efficiently, etc.I Wish I Had A Card and King Done Writing (Score:2)
I would certainly buy a copy online if I had a way to make the online transaction.
The only drawback that I see is that Stephen King books are meant to be read with both hands clutching a fifty pound tomb, snug in bed or a chair or streched out on the grass in a public park. I don't really want to read king on a monitor. Plus, there is truly something nice about a hardcover book and pages that is very pleasing for some of us. Also, I like to collect books. I don't want to have two gigabytes of books on my hard drive. I want to have tons of shelves filled with tangible reading material -- each with a different cover and style and appeal. However, the brilliant part of something like this is that you can make a somewhat acceptable compromise and just have a nice printer and a cheap $50 binding tool like a lot of high schools still have and let the consumer become the publisher of their own reading material. Heh.
Anyway, I hope this doesn't push out books you can touch, hold and see on shelves, but I do hope this forces the publishing world to realize they need to be less the nazi's they are and embrace a new world of information and demand.
Glad King is feeling better and that he is still writing, though! I remember shortly after his accident, he had stated that he wasn't sure if he was going to ever write again. And here he's been pumping out some rather interesting material and in interesting mediums recently! I really have to respect and admire this guy. I hope he keeps it up, even if this first main trial doesn't do so well.
King is the fucking man.
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seumas.com
Re:READ THIS (Score:2)
I don't think Signal 11 needs to resort to activating other accounts to boost his karma. He's frequently insightful. You might disagree with me, but I just don't see the conspiracy here.
The biggest problem with the SPP is... (Score:2)
... is that you have to have some idea what to ask for. This is by far the greatest stumbling block in my opinion, especially for new authors.
Virtually no one can estimate the "value" of an initial piece of work (or even the first few pieces) from an unknown author. Using the SPP, the first couple of works from an author usually end up horribly under-compensated. While this is useful for gauging the future asking price for prolific authors (such as Mr. King, or long-term performers such as The Rolling Stones), what about the people doing one-offs? Or who only want to write 2-3 works? Inevitably, they get screwed, since the amount they receive via the SPP is considerably less than that which their popularity should dictate.
In order to use the SPP a bit more fairly, I suggest a modification which helps bring the compensation model more in line with a particular work's popularity:
I think this would more fairly compensate the unknown or low-output author. We still need to come up with a better micropayments method than we currently have. PayPal is OK, but by no means problem-free.
-Erik
PS - and the publishers do have a point: they do provide large value-add to the author (PR, printing, tours, editing, equipment, et al). The current question is if the cost they charge is greater than the value-add.
Author's worst nightmare. (Score:2)
I speak from experience when I say that it's not easy to step out of the standard publishing industry. It's also not easy to step into.
King can be successful with this method, but I don't think it's viable for your average author. I also don't think the SPP is viable.
But for most writers and readers, the biggest problem for non-standard publishing is the lack of an editor. Take Katz for example. Not to pick on him, but if anyone remembers his early articles, they were ripe with typos and inaccuracies. My novel is published at www.xlibris.com [xlibris.com], and if you look through the excerpts from other writers, you'll notice the same trend. Writers are notoriously bad at editing their own work. Most wouldn't even know where to begin.
King can afford his own editor. Jim Munroe self-published his second novel. Check it out at www.nomediakings.com [nomediakings.com] He is good enough to edit his own work, and the result is an excellent novel.
Most readers will be profoundly disappointed by the quality of a raw novel.
Re:Why publishing companies are good (Score:2)
Editing any book is a huge task. As I mentioned in another post, take a look at self-published, unedited works on the internet, and you'll realize how hard this can be.
King has an editor for this book. Side note: he needs much more aggressive editors for anything he produces.
Re:Author's worst nightmare. (Score:2)
Besides the fact (Score:2)
Re:Deviations from protocol (Score:2)
What King is doing is a more structured and restrictive version of what some friends of mine like to call "tipware"--releasing a story into the wild and saying, "If you liked it, send me something!" model, which is also being used by Free ePress [free-epress.com]. You're not paying for something not written yet; you're paying for something you've already downloaded.
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Re:I'd like to pay more... (Score:2)
Whoever wrote the article probably never tips. (How does tipping hold up in the prisoner's dilemma?)
Here is why I tip as well as I do. I go to the same few places around here all of the time. Even when serveice is less than good, I still tip well. Why? Because I don't want the wait-people to remember me as "that cheap guy" and mess with my next order. Tipping is how you reward your wait-person for a job well done, and how you can subtly let them know you are dissatisfied with their service. But not tipping at all (unless things are REALLY bad) is just going to piss them off.
In the context of the prisoner's dilemma, think of it like this. The cost of defecting is that in the next round you are going to get shat upon by the other guy. IIRC, it has been shown that in multiple rounds of PD it is best to cooperate (tip) anyway.
And there you go...
Based on downloads? (Score:2)
Particularly when you allow for download-bots, a model based on ( # payments / # downloads ) seems extraordinarily ripe for abuse.
Of course, as long as the conventional book market exists, this is a risk-free strategy for an established author. If King makes the desired amount of money from downloads, he keeps it free and clear. If he doesn't, he should have no problem finding a publisher to make a dead-tree version at his usual rate. Because there's no chance that he'll end up uncompensated for his time and effort, his threat to discontinue e-distribution in the event of non-payment is credible. This would not be the case for a new or unfamiliar author using the same distribution system.
Anyone try to cheat yet? (Funny) (Score:3)
http://radiant.www.conxion.com/ [conxion.com]
Pretty funny, I thought.
Here's the text:
You are not permitted to view the contents of this directory.
If you have gotten here by mistake, then please use your back button and follow the correct link for The Plant download.
If you have gotten here on purpose, remember -- don't steal from the blind newsboy.
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Still makes money (Score:2)
FP
Product placement? (Score:2)
SHeesh. (Score:2)
It's simple. If you like the story, pay up. If you don't like it, or can't pay up, don't.
IF enough people pay, and King sees the $$$, then he'll have the incentive to write the next part of the story.
If the story sucks, and nobody wants to see it, they won't pay!
Percentage is the wrong idea (Score:2)
Re:Salem's Bot (Score:2)
Great way to get a few quick $s.
Not saying he *is*, but he very well might be...
Re:Salem's Bot (Score:2)
This will fail the way it's written, it has to be set to a flat fee, and a counter so people can see how close they are to it.
The escrow idea would help, but I'm sure he's famous enough that he can get people willing to lose a buck, at least in the beginning.
Re:I'd like to pay more... (Score:2)
I myself won't pay for the book, because I don't like King. I'll probably grab a copy from a friend later (so as not to screw up the stats for those who do) and give it a read... if I like it, I will pay, but a system designed to extort money should fail.
Keeping track of downloads is the wrong way, it's like saying, give it a try, but if you don't like it, pay anyways, so you don't screw everyone.
Re:Please... (Score:2)
The fact that 78% of serious fans obeyed King isn't suprising. I'm not a fan and I didn't download, because I wanted to give it the best chance, but there are people out there who don't just not care, but actively care, about ruining everyone else's fun.
Re:Please... (Score:3)
It was fairly obvious even without the article that it won't work if it's based on percentages.
Two things *need* to be changed... First, there needs to be a set ammount of money per installment, not a percentage. Second, there needs to be a limit of the number of installments.
I'm not a SK fan, but I might download a free book to give it a read, *if* it's free and won't hurt anything. Then, if I like it, I'll pay for it. Not before. But I won't do that now because it hurts the whole process if I don't like it and choose not to pay.
I'd also feel cheated if I payed for the first few parts, then found out that instead of ending it in a reasonable ammount of words, SK decided to stretch it out to 500,000 words, in $1/8000 word installments.
At some point, if he decides to keep going, the installments should be free. Otherwise he's suckering people in with the idea of paying less for a book then milking them...
I'd say that the installments should stop at four, or be free from then on. I'd only pay $4, *tops*, for an e-book.
It does seem that he's set it up to fail. He's getting a large whack of cash from fans, and a large percentage of that will go straight to him, and it's gonna go down the tubes, 'forcing' him to stop, and because there's no escrow involved, he has to keep the money... poor boy, cheated by the evil internet.
One-shot? (Score:5)
You mention Hofstadter's column, but you neglect to mention his conclusion that the REAL rational strategy is to cooperate, even in a one-shot. Of course, his experiment with rational people didn't pan out as he wanted...
In any case, there are two flaws in your argument:
1) This isn't a one-shot. There are other writers in the world and probably other novels from this writer. Thus we could play the game many more times. For this to work, we'd need some way of identifying the "players" however. In this case, that would also include "did they give copies to other defectors?"
2) (most importantly) You've got the payoff matrix wrong. In addition to the $1 vs $0 in the "Novel not Released" column, you need to add "Didn't get to read the end of the book". Assign tags like so:
A: I defect AND novel released
B: I cooperate AND novel released
C: I defect AND novel not released
D: I cooperate AND novel not released
A game only counts as the Prisoner's Dilemna if A > B > C > D. As it stands, B (coop and get novel) is greater than C (defect and lose novel). But to some people the risk of a dollar is negligble compared with the cost of missing the end of a King novel. To determine the real chances you'd have to do a poll to find people who cared enough about King that they would download a partial novel. Then ask them for numbers that would satisfy
$1 x (risk of losing dollar) - (value of reading FULL novel) x (risk of NOT reading FULL novel) = 0
That said, I think King's choice of a percentage rather than a straight dollar amount will doom this to failure AND I think your idea of escrow is a good one.
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Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Re:Maybe you all can just theorize about it (Score:2)
1. Boycotters of Amazon will hate the blatant 1-click shopping.
2. How many 20-page installments will this book have. I would guess he has the $10,000 already and could go on to installment #2 tomorrow.
3. If this experiment is succesfull it doesn't mean joe schmo writer would be successful this way, even if amazon agreed to give them a similar deal.
4. The "honor system" is avoidable, but I think he meant to show that it is only at the expense of risking people going elsewhere. As a publicity stunt, this will gauruntee page hits to his site which valued at a penny a hit will far exceed dollar revenues. (yes a penny is an arbitrary figure).
5. This is a good system for an online learning course. If people find a course useful they might pay to get the instructor to continue. It's a paradigm for many things.
6. Holding people in "escrow" by getting the money up front and returning it later is far far more annoying than the likable 1-click credit card payment that has been arranged.
7. Anyone who sets up an ftp site with this novella is a bad person (tm) and also breaking the law.
-Ben
Re:I'm a bit disappointed (Score:2)
This is assuming you are measuring the 'value' of a book by the number of pages it has. This seems pretty silly and arbitrary to me.
LL
Escrow (Score:2)
Honestly, any predictions of what is going to happen is just a wild guess about uncharted territory. People don't think in terms of the Prisoners Dillema, and if they did everybody would just stop paying once that magic $100,000 point was reached.
I say, just wait and see. The worst thing that happens is it doesn't work and the experiment fails. That's all, no collapse of civilization.
I'll be paying (Score:2)
I'll pay $1 now. And another in a month. And save both files. If the final installment doesn't come out, so I wasted $2. Big deal. I waste more than that every day on cigarettes.
I'm quite aware of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It was one of the favorite lessons of my micro prof. And your analysis seems good. And no, I shouldn't pay. But then again, I shouldn't support NPR (and won't, until Dianne Rehm is buried) and I shouldn't support PBS (which I do). Sometimes, you have to do the right thing, even if it doesn't make financial sense.
Mass-Market Busking (Score:2)
I think it is relevant to this discussion.
Interesting. (Score:2)
These questions are of interest to us all, and I guess they must be because at least 1/3 of the stories on here are related to these issues.
Authors seem to have it both the best and the worst on the interenet currently. The best because it's easy to distribute their content economically and the baseline machine / internet connection can handle their medium easily. The worst because they're the poor cousin on the bandwidth requirements scale so their stuff is also easiest to rip off. I hope something's worked out so we can all benefit.
Hotnutz.com [hotnutz.com] - Funny
Two problems... (Score:2)
2) This whole 'project' can be blown up by a few l33t script kiddies who repeatedly download the file, as I guess the 75 percent value is related to the number of downloads (which is a flawed concept, IMHO).
Nonetheless, I don't think King is in this for the money. He's got a lot already, and he can keep publishing whatever he wants and make more, so this is an interesting project for him. It's the implementation that is flawed... Well, and the whole thing only works with King and maybe half a dozen other bestseller writers, so it's not exactly the model for the future.
Escrow vs. Non-Escrow (Score:2)
FWIW, Credit cards have two items associated with each transaction (you buying something) - the authorization, and the settlement.
The authorization is done at card-swipe time (or one-clicking at Amazon). They check that you have a valid CC, and that the amount of the sale is under the credit limit for the account. The amount of the sale is "reserved" on the card - deducted from the total credit available for later purchases.
At settlement, the merchant validates that they did indeed get the merchandise (whatever form that takes - a UPS box, a download, etc) to you. At that time they actually transfer money. That shows up on your bill.
There has been a lot of talk here about the Escrow type payment system. It really is not needed. There is a built-in time limit, kept by the credit card companies, between authorization and settlement. Originally it was up to 30 days (though now is usually only a week or less).
If the CC companies can guarrantee that a certain kind of authorization is good for X days (say 10, 14, or 30 days), then an author can use that instead of an escrow system.
For example, if King announces his new novel will be published if X dollars are paid for it within a certain time frame, he can collect payments (in variable amounts, no less) for Y days (however long the time period is). If the total at the end is enough, he settles all the payments, everyone's CC get charged, and he puts his book out for free download. If not, he does nothing and all the CC authorizations expire, freeing up the credit on everyones account (whatever they had put in).
Simple. And the nice part is no one can know what the total paid so far has gotten to, so no one can look at the total so far and decide based on it whether to contribute.
Who needs escrows?
So, to reiterate.... (Score:4)
King may be able to declare early success. (Score:4)
"So far, his bet seemed to be paying off. Marsha DeFilippo, an aide who is working with King on the project, said that as of Monday afternoon there had been about 34,000 downloads and that about 75 percent of the users were paying their dollar right away by credit card. Readers also have the option of mailing payments to a post office box."
Re:The Stephen King Public License... (Score:2)
Re:Wrong world (Score:2)
I don't buy unfinished books. (Score:2)
I really have to wonder how any people are like me and won't even look at a incomplete book. I'm sure as hell not gonna pay $15 (assuming 15 chapters) for a damn downloaded book. King's just a money grubbing scammer leeching off the talent he used to have for writing interresting horror. People buy his books at this point because 1)He is in a niche genre - and there are very few new authors getting published.--Don't even think about bringing up the Bachman crap. I the writer wan't you he wouldn't have gotten published in the first place. 2)People are in the habit of buying his books.
Hey Steve, howsa bout you dump a little of that payola back to the community by starting a book publishing house and publishing books by new writers. Didn't you ever write a book about some guys greed coming back to haunt him?
King should use micropayments and PayPal (Score:2)
George
Why publishing companies are good (Score:3)
Thanks,
George
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What to do... :-( (Score:2)
I haven't downloaded the story yet, but I'm sure it will turn up on gnutella in a few minutes. Hey! There it is.
It could be kind of fun sending in your dollar with a little note for Steven telling him how much you enjoyed the chapter. A nightmare for his staff to open all those letters and pull out the cash, since they can't just toss all the fanmail into the trash from now on
the AC
Yet Another Option (Score:2)
Umm, correct me if I'm wrong, but he could still publish an actual "book." I for one could care less about the net as a distribution method for books. I like reading from actual pages and not spending even more time staring at a computer screen.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Re:Salem's Bot (Score:2)
:-)
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
special e-money for small amounts? (Score:2)
Separating "small amounts" from "large amounts" is important because it is a fundamentally different thing. Small amount could do with less security, simpler transactions etc. Transactions towards large amounts could only happen in bulk.
Re:Post-copyright? (Score:2)
If this works, it won't affect his ability to make money. I mean he'll still get royalties from every video of Children of the Corn (ok, he'll probably make more from The Shawshank Redemption or Carrie) sold. I don't think he's in any danger of going broke. He's not trying to destroy copyright on traditional distribution methods... just trying to find a new way to make money publishing in a digital format. In fact, why is he publishing digitally at all? It can only be that he likes to experiment... because it's like saying, "here, pirate my book."
What do rich people do when they're bored? I assume one thing is look at various causes they are interested in. He might be interested in this, if it works, he'll probably get credit in the history books, somehow. I think he has an idealistic streak, because of The Dead Zone.
Of course, it might just be a revenge thing because he's a Mac fan and his last book was legally illegible on a Mac. I think revenge might be a good motivator for him too, see Creepshow.
legally illegible: The latest fun creation of the DMCA.
This would only work for a big name (Score:2)
Re:Please... (Score:2)
The error lies rather with the person who decided to offer the content as a static link, rather than hidden behind a form forcing you to read and accept the licence. I had rather assumed that amazon would have taken care of this; pay the dollar, get taken to a dynamic url to grab the pdf.
Of course, that would have completely ruined the hair(hare?) brained scheme of measuring honesty to begin with...
As it is, of course people are going to send the link to their friends, spiders that don't understand/listen to robots.txt will crawl it... complete and utter stupidity. Set up to fail, as Jamie said.
I quite liked the write up, btw.
Re:Publishers lend credibility... (Score:2)
Distraction by Bruce Sterling.
As common for BS, he does a bit of a Theodore Sturgeon; great ideas, not-so-great prose (well, I guess I vote with my wallet, own every one he's written, so the prose aint that bad).
Anyway, apart from litterary sniping, I wanted to point out that he introduces the concept of reputation servers. In the book, there are huge gangs of bartering hippies/gypsies/motorcycle gangs. Your status is measured by your repuation. Of course, people move from group to group, so there are these root reputation servers (and two warring protocols, yadda yadda) that allow people to vote on past experiences with others.
So helpful people get instant credibility in new groups, and slackers and layabouts get recognised for that as well. Karma, basically.
Now the karma system sucks because it is the karma system. If slashdot added to necessay hooks for 3rd party karma, then I could have the posts sorted according to my CompSci karma list (so that if Knuth ever were to post, he'd come in at +50 odd) while others might have a server that rated good use of hot grits and frightened aspiring actresses in posts. It is easy to envision how to extend the system to make it hard for people to hi-jack your karma server.
Taken to an extreme, we are almost getting to Fire-fly. The danger is that extensive user profiling (cue ominous strings) is just want marketers want. But you can design against that if you recognise it as a concern.
Heh. (Score:2)
So I'm wondering what King's incentive might be to backstab publishers. Has he suddenly decided he wants MORE money than the millions he already made by writing?
To use a geek-friendly metaphor, this is like saying Bill Gates wants to screw capitalism. The truth is, King is the one who was best-served by the publishing world.
So something is fishy, trust me.
Re:One-shot? (Score:2)
any more chapters. This can piss people off, who figure they have
been screwed by the contract, even if the amount at stake is just a
token. Depressing the utility of D (this worst case outcome) is a
deterrent to people to take part, another reason why the `target
percentage' is a bad idea.
The real Street Performers Protocol has a refund system in it.
Great idea... damn Amazon. (Score:2)
So, I went to pay for it. I downloaded the PDF and glanced at it (I'm at work) and I decided I was in support of what King is doing. So I clicked on the link to pay. And that's when I decided
It's a shame, really. I wonder how many other people don't pay because they are as paranoid as I am?
I kinda hope this works. . . (Score:3)
Alas, I wonder at the prospects of a publisher 1)taking a gamble at making money on online electronic distributin 2)publishers being willing to convert exisitng hard copy into e-text, and 3)publishers being willing to send out books in a universally intelligble format that doesn't require a special reader or software, so that they can be read anywhere one sees fit. King succeeding on this one could make some distributors and publishers think a little harder about the possibilities (and profitability) of online distribution.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
This has already worked (Score:2)
Sure, it's on the internet, but it's not new. Dickens famously wrote his novels in serial form, publishing them in story magazines, and crowds formed on publishing day for a chance to plunk down their tuppence or whatever for the next issue.
One famous anecdote relates that when Dickens was completing the last installment of "The Olde Curiousity Shoppe" a mob formed on the pier waiting for the next shipment of magazines to call into port, yelling "Does Little Nell die?" to the approaching sailors.
This will work, although it might take some tweaking.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
IF it fails... (Score:5)
But if this fails, damn... we're in trouble. And the repercussions could extend well beyond media like books, even perhaps to the extent that OSS software advocates will have to argue against the "King Incident" when proselytizing and open source solution.
Consider Netscape Mozilla. Inside the community, people mostly understand that the project is doing well (with some misgivings perhaps) but int he corporate world, Mozilla is tarred as a top-flight example of "the failure of open source" as a business model. It's unfair, but it's also the popular impression.
Similarly, King can afford to screw himself once or twice while playing with new means of distribution. So could, perhaps, Daniel Steel or Dean Koontz, or the other pot-boilers. But the less well-heeled authors out there, who are scraping by on their publishing income and probably a shit job on the side, can't afford to take risks. They'll view this move by King as a litmus test of the viability of online publishing, and they'll act accordingly.
I want very much for this experiment to succeed. It's the first step towards a more open, better-connected world. But if it doesn't, expect massive damage control on the side of IP freedoms.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
75 percent!!?!? (Score:2)
I think that he will be lucky to get a 30% return rate...and if he does, he will still make a pretty nice profit.
It will be interesting to see if he truly will NOT release the final chapter when he still makes millions on the novel.
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
This is *NOT* a prisoner's dilema (Score:2)
DB
Re:READ THIS (Score:2)
'Signal 11', complete with mail-forwarding from the given mail account, cost me a pair of Alteon 571 SS7 motherboards and 300 MII chips back in January. Everybody wondered why he suddenly went whacko; It was just me having fun!
'Enoch Root' was one of my old Karma Whoring accounts, and I used it from time to time after people caught on to my whoring keep the name fresh in their minds.
I've been using 'Sig 11' for trolling mostly, in an effort to dwindle the 600 Karma down to +1 land (figured it might be good for a laugh) and 'Enoch Root' just when I feel like looking
respectable. This account, 'technos' was one of my later failed attempts at abusing the moderation system. I only ever managed 300 karma on it, so it was a failure..
Sincerely,
osm
Someone forgot their sense of humor today! (Score:2)
Two, I'm only a part-time troll, but thanks for noticing!
Three, that was, and was supposed to be, more ridiculous than the conspiracy theory itself, eg, a joke. One would have to be an actor of top caliber, completely insane, and jobless to pull off a simultaneous performance of 'osm', 'Signal 11', 'Enoch Root', and 'technos', complete with supporting mail addresses and web pages.
Re:Someone forgot their sense of humor today! (Score:2)
Re:Someone forgot their sense of humor today! (Score:2)
I honestly think Sig is irrationally peeved enough with the troll population (yourself included, no doubt) to jump ship, given a site with sufficient educated traffic and similar content.. Look at any of his good rants from Feb.. Enoch Root I have little opinion on, other than he seems to follow the same behavioral pattern as the other infamous longtime
Now you strike me as an 'old newbie'. Semi-permanent Slashdot incarnation like me?? Or (And I use the term in the best possible sense; I am one of the trolls. afterall!) are you solely a troll?
Re:Post-copyright? (Score:2)
Then again, steven king is not exactly a small unknown author. So why's he actually doing this? I don't think it's some big Athenian crusade either, but it can't have that much to do with money, if he's making it so deliberately easy to circumvent the payment system. So, we're faced with the possibility that he is indeed testing his audience for loyalty... it's all a big ego-stroke for King.
Which I can kind of understand, actually. There's a comment below (marked "flamebait," currently) that accuses King of really pandering to the publishers. I'm sure he's heard this accusation before; maybe he wants people to prove they really like him. "Hey guys, this one's just for you! I'm not being self aggrandizing and making a million bucks, see?"
Of course, if all goes well for him, he will ;)
Re:75 percent!!?!? (Score:2)
OK, so we know that it is almost impossible for the scheme to result in his publishing the book (excpet if he decides to do so just for the normal amount of money). So why would he get to keep the money? Who knows how many people are going to be ripped off from this scheme. He ought to have some preset dollar amount that requires him to publish the whole book. Like whatever he would be getting as an advance. Otherwise it's premeditated wire fraud.
The easiest solution is to get your copy from someone other than the official website. Then he'll think that only one person dl'd the installments.
This is such a bunch of shit. His books have a lot of variance in quality, so we may all be defrauded for a crappy book (with the inevitable cliffhanger). This scheme is not the way to go about internet publishing. We need micropayments, badly.
FOR %^$#^%'s SAKE! GO TO THE LIBRARY! (Score:2)
Why the hell does everyone want their own home library? What advantage does it give you? If the book isn't from O'Reiley, there's almost no chance that you can't wait until morning to go get it. Why don't you check the book out and then, if you like it, buy it. Why buy a book whose quality is unknown to you? All the dust jacket reviews are going to be glowing. That's why they put them there.
Sorry for the rant. This whole situation strikes me as ridiculous.
I disagree with the analogy. (Score:2)
it's not about whether someone is going to pay the $1 because they feel inclined to or feel guilty, but if you start to think that you're paying $1 for reading an entertaining part of the story, and to hopefully be able to read the next installment.
I think King is correct in putting money in the belief that the majority of his readers will chalk up $1 to guarantee themselves the next installment. Who the hell wants to read 2/3 of the story and not get to read the conclusion??!?
If this novel can build the climax the way Stephen King is known to, then EVERYONE that reads the novel with pay the $1 to read the conclusion.
Again, who would read 300-500 pgs, only to not finish the book?
Re:Please... (Score:2)
I've never read a Stephen King book but I paid the dollar for part 1 and downloaded it primarily because I believed in the idea. Please take that link down quickly.
----------
AbiWord [abisource.com]: The BEST opensource word processor
***UPDATE*** (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Re:Please... (Score:2)
-Vercingetorix
Re:Please... (Score:2)
So far, 78% of the people who've downloaded have paid for it. It looks as thought the naysayers in this case are wrong.
-Vercingetorix
You're leaving out one thing... (Score:5)
To look at it from another perspective, how many people do you think would send in $1 if King announced that the next novel in the Dark Tower series would be published next week if only people would send in $1 to indicate reader interest? If enough people didn't respond the book wouldn't be published. A whole lot of people would be sending in a buck.
The unfortunate part of this is that it only works for wildly popular authors like King. Joe Q. Author could probably not rely on such a strategy to make a livable income.
-Vercingetorix
where he got his idea. (Score:2)
Legalese has its uses (Score:2)
$ cat < /dev/mouse
The community will complete the last part (Score:2)
I'd probably pay a lot just to see all of those variations.
Re:Please... (Score:2)
me and my perl script . . . (Score:2)
Why will big publishers probably not do this ? Because a huge number of downloads might feed the old scribbler's ego, and promote the idea of reaching a huge audience, which would help sell the idea to the new and independent authors, who are the ones they really have to worry about signing and capturing.
However, there is a chance that even if SK made more money on this than any other book, he'd still feel offended at the "billions and billions" of people who "read" it and didn't pay. Most authors (think of Metallica) can't really mentally comprehend the idea of selling something and then not owning it after the transaction -- look at the emotional offense they feel after you do what you want with the tape/CD that they *sold* to you. They really believe that they sell something and then still own it, that they can eat their cake and have it too.
There is a reason why publishers will survive, and it is simple: most artists are too dumb to manage a lemonade stand, let alone their own businesses. A few can, but the best hope for the rest is to go with someone who can count their money for them.
If you support this experiment and want it to succeed, DDOS his server right now, and post mirrors of the pdf somewhere else, like geocities.
If SK is really going to pay attention to that ratio number, just be aware that it is highly vulnerable to manipulation. If I gave a shit (I think SK sucks as an author, screw him, and online publishing will happen no matter what this experiment results in, it is the one and only future path) I'd consider it my duty to fix those the results in the right direction before someone else did it in the other way.
Can you sleep at night... (Score:3)
And that he'll be coming for you!
Failure For Sure with /. Effect (Score:4)
Re:Salem's Bot (Score:2)
Given that, there are all sorts of solutions that are open. The system could require that you enter an e-mailed password, or it could display one graphically and ask you to retype it (I stole this from a recent posting about stopping slashdot trollbots). It could just block a domain for a brief time after each download; even in a DDoS each box sends a relatively large number of requests, and this would slow them all down (this would inconvenience some humans, but perhaps it could put them on queue and display the first few pages to whet their appetites).
Or, to be realistic, the administrator could look at the logs, note that one domain increased its downloads a thousandfold for a couple of hours at 0200, and throw those out of the average. It's not like King is looking for an excuse not to write the book...
- Michael Cohn
Salem's Bot (Score:5)
And of course it eventually develops a malevolent, superhuman intelligence and kills them all one by one, but we still don't have the novel. An unlikely group of slashdot misfits convince the bot to look at the RIAA website, and it decides it would be deliciously evil to deprive King of his unwritten intellectual property by finishing the novel in his style...
But it still goes around killing and eating people and stuff. The evil is finally quieted - but never destroyed - when it's convinced to settle down and become a node on Freenet.
- Michael Cohn
Taking on Big Publishing? (Score:2)
playing devil's advocate here - I'm interested in the aspect of why this/linux/napster etc etc is all to do with taking on Big X.
Every other story on
So here's a question for y'all:
What things are these big companies actually good for? Under what circumstances - Right Now - do you agree with Big X? i don't mean if they did this or that, but actually right now...what good things do you see Microsoft, record labels, publishers etc doing that others are not?
just wondered
Auction off the next novel? (Score:2)
Just a thought, not sure it would work, but something in the statement about "not knowing how to price something" suggests auctions to me.
Re:Better than charity! (Score:2)
I believe you misunderstand. I'd download and pay the $1, but I don't want to read it. Giving a false impression of support is probably worse than downloading and not paying.
There are many books and short stories I'd pay $1 for. King just isn't one of them. I downloaded the free PDF he gave away a few months ago and didn't like it. However, I did download, enjoy, and pay for a They Might Be Giants CD from emusic.com at more than $1. I'll continue to support artists I like in the way I see fit and pass over artists that I don't prefer to benefit. Isn't that really what the street performer protocol is all about? I purchased previous performances (the older books), decided I didn't like them, and am now passing by on the latest performance without "watching" the entertainment or paying.
Isn't this the same idea behind third parties? (Score:3)
This is the same logic that has kept the democratic and republican parties "in power" for the past 200+ years: the idea that your dollar (vote) doesn't matter.
On the smallest level (you) that's right. Your dollar (vote) won't change anything. From a macro view, 1000 people saying that they'll pay (vote) does make a difference. You (the individual) are now part of the 1000 people that made a difference.
$1/book isn't bad. It's better than buying used books. Then again, I prefer King's short stories over the long-drawn-out novels so I won't download or pay for it.
This is going to be fascinating (Score:3)
10 million downloads * 10% = 1 million * $1 'donation' = $1 million!
Mirrors? (Score:2)
tee hee.
Please... (Score:5)
Publishers lend credibility... (Score:3)
The current publishing system saves me alot of time when it comes to sorting the huge amount of available material. F'rinstance, how many of us /.ers gravitate to the O'reilly tomes before considering anything else? Why? Because ORA built up a reputation for publishing *quality* books. Sure, I would still be able to pick the autors brain via this new distribution method, but it would take me a lot longer (perhaps never) to locate the book. This systems relies on word of mouth as the primary means by which an author can promote his book.
Glazik
Paying for the Book (Score:3)
First they require my email address. Which would be my username for my amazon account.
On the next screen they require a password and my credit card infomarion.
On the final screen they require my billing address and phone number
So the cost also includes my e-mail address, billing address, and phone number
I lied about this information of course. But this could cause a lot of people not to pay.
I'd like to pay more... (Score:3)
It's also too bad I can't contribute more; I'd love to pay $5.00 towards the cost, if it'll make it that much more likely that everyone can have a piece of it for free.
BTW, while I respect the prisoner's dilemma, I don't think charities would hold too well inside of it. It also doesn't account for the "It's just 1 friggin' dollar, cheapskate" factor.
Whoever wrote the article probably never tips. (How does tipping hold up in the prisoner's dilemma?)
Re:The Stephen King Public License... (Score:3)
Actually, it is in legalese. That is, it sets out one part of a scheme of obligations and considerations in clear terms. The fact that it's in colloquial legalese rather than the rather pompous version most of my learned colleagues use most of the time is neither here nor there.
Most of what you usually ID as "legalese" is in fact the result of re-using the contract wording from last time you wrote one of these. Which of course you re-used from the time before that, and you could probably trace the actual piece of white-page drafting back to 1842, or similar...
And yes, writing a contract is as much like writing a piece of code as it sounds. Most of it's bits of stuff you used before.
Wrong world (Score:4)
post-copyright world
Tell me when we get there because I don't ever see it happening. The world we live in is one where breaching copyright is becoming easier, and no doubt will continue to get easier, but it is still illegal.
Just because you can do something, doesn't make it right.