the mysteries of merch

[loligo]

So, people have been talking a lot in the past few days about the ethics of illegally downloading e-books (including international/cross-cultural aspects of the issue). And it brought up a question for me that is very much tangential to the original point. Several people pointed out reasons why illegal sharing of music is not necessarily a good

Comments

[svilleficrecs]

One fundamental difference underlying this, I think, is that music can be one to one or one to many. In that, even when I buy and play a perfectly legal music copy, I could put it in my head phones for just me, play it on my stereo for everyone in my house, play it at a party for a crowd, etc, so forth. It can be (legally) consumed in both solo and group contexts, with a single minded focus or as background noise. Because this (legal, intended) usage can be done so many ways, there are more potential ... extras. I can listen at a concert while wearing a t-shirt. I can play it on the way over, then enjoy again at the concert. With so many contexts, you've got many opportunities for extras

[loligo]

While plenty of them would never pay for author-sanctioned extras, I'm guessing a lot of them might.

For the right author, I definitely would.

[vom_marlowe]

Some books have merch. When I worked at a bookstore, we often got free tee shirts with book art on it. Just a datapoint in your theory.

I have some pretty complicated and non-traditional views of ebook piracy in part because of my librarianship bearings and in part because of which library system I'm a part of. We're spearheading open access, so I'm kind of an outlier I guess.

[loligo]

When I worked at a bookstore, we often got free tee shirts with book art on it.

Did you notice any patterns in terms of what kind of books were most likely to use this strategy?

[vom_marlowe]

It was usually lit books--Oprah type books, if you know what I mean. Paulo Coehlo's Alchemist was my favorite, because it was such beautiful art.