On Tuesday, 22 December 2015 at 16:16:53 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
On Tuesday, 22 December 2015 at 16:10:23 UTC, Joakim wrote:
It is all beyond idiotic: it is amazing how long antiquated
ideas stick around, only because people cannot imagine
anything else.
What you're describing sounds basically like a magazine... paid
freelance authors contributing articles.
Heh, never thought of that analogy. :) I can see why you might
think that, because a blog is continually produced by many
writers, like a weekly magazine, as opposed to a single end
product written by one person over a year or two, like a book.
There is some similarity to magazines, though bloggers wouldn't
be forced to any schedule, even weekly.
As for the paid freelancer aspect, magazines pay by the piece and
I think they usually keep the copyright, because they had that
bargaining power. With paid blogs, you'd do revenue-sharing,
with the writer getting 70%+ of the money their posts garnered,
and keeping their copyright, similar to the deal LeanPub makes.
There's just too much competition for writers these days for them
to get much less than that.
But the biggest difference is that online is a much more dynamic
format, with all kinds of innovations to come, with everything
from tipping extra for articles you like, as you might for good
service at a restaurant, to building recommendation systems to
find the best customized selection of posts for _you_ to read.
If you'd have told me at the inception of the Web 25 years ago
that most writers would still make money primarily through _print
books_ in 2015, I'd have said you're nuts. And yet, sadly,
that's where we are today.
