Late to the dance, as always
All the SF/F writers on lj know what I'm talking about. Everyone else will just have to try to keep up from context...
So the whole "To give it away or not to give it away" palaver. All the discussion of Gresham's Law and what-all. The non-fungible-ness of books. Let's try to sum it up quickly:
Point: If writers are giving away books for free, there's no reason for people to pay for books. They can get plenty of free reading material.
Counterpoint: But not all books are created equal. People will pay for the books they want. The freebies are simply to hook them. The library works the same way.
Point: it sets a bad precident. Where does the giving-away stop?
Counterpoint: see above, re: not all books created equal.
Barbarienne's thought: Heh, not according to some marketing/forecasting people I've spoken to
So let's do the thought experiments.
Best Case Scenario: Writer A gives away a book, for free, on the web. Reader X reads it, likes it, runs out and buys the rest of Writer A's backlist, pre-orders A's next new book on Amazon, and also buys books from Writers B, C, and D, who are in the same subgenre as A, and therefore appeal to Reader X.
Worst Case Scenario: The technology has evolved so that downloaded books are either on paper-like product, or the readers are all used to reading off screens anyway. Writer F gives away all books, all backlist, for free. People who like Writer F's stuff get it for free, and since they're all skinflints or perhaps the social pressures have evolved to a sense of aucun engagement,* Writer F makes no money.
So here's the thing. In either case, what happens next?
Best Case Scenario: Writers B, C, and D, knowing a good thing when they see it, also put up books on the web for free download. Each of those downloads has a similar effect: driving the readers to run out and buy more dead tree editions of other books they might not otherwise have bought.
Worst Case Scenario: Writer F and all others who follow his plan go bankrupt and quit writing. They become cost-accountants instead. The publishing companies go looking for the next wannabe. Because they are no longer offering to pay money (why should the publishers offer money when the writers are giving it away free?), they are only getting writers who are so obsessed with getting their words in front of the public that they're willing to work for free. Lulu.com isn't competition, because publishing companies have distribution networks. Publish Amurikuh becomes a real publisher, and Ann and Victoria and Yog Sysop all fall on their faces in shame and apology.
Er, yeah.
The real result lies somewhere in between. One of the problems with giving away electronic books is that at some point the utility evaporates. If reading electronic editions becomes easy, if all of an author's list is available, if almost everyone who reads is getting the free electronic editions...then yeah, the author starts to lose sales. But ya know, I have a certain degree of faith that if something like that were to happen, the authors would be smart enough to say, "er, no, I don't want to give my books away anymore."
Let's suppose the publishers were insisting on it, and the authors had zero ability to deny electronic rights to their publisher. The publishers aren't interested in giving everything away for free either, since they, too, only make money if people pay for books.
Now, I can imagine a scenario where the publisher doesn't make money from the books, but rather from, say, advertisements that they download with the books. Perhaps from product placement within the books, similar to that of movies.
Wow, sounds a lot like newspapers. Now, I don't imagine that newspaper writers are being treated like superstars, but last I looked, they still got paid (and generally better than most novel-writers). Maybe so many more people want to be novel writers that publishing companies wouldn't lack for free content to pack the advertising with.
Yet in the end, it does come down to the non-fungible-ness of books. Readers want something good** to read, and they want it NOW. They do not want to wade through piles and piles of crap writing. And hell--even if readers are so lacking in brains that they can't tell good writing from bad, they at least don't want to have to wade through piles of Romance novels if they're looking for a Jack London style adventure story. They will pay for the priviledge of having someone else sort through the thousands and thousands of new books.
The fear I have is that the rise of POD and e-book technology can make the pool of unvetted writing so high, that future readers might bag on the whole business and go play video games instead. But if that's gonna happen, it isn't going to be because a bunch of vetted writers promoted themselves on the web.
* "No obligation," rendered pretentiously into French via Babelfish. I almost hope it makes the sentence stupidly funny.
** For wide values of "good," since those are highly variable from reader to reader.