Did we ever pay for content?
Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis in Paid Content
In an essay that, on first blush, ranks near to Clay Shirky’s seminal thinking-the-unthinkable think piece, Paul Graham argues that we never paid for content:
In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?
A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8.6 cents a page. The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8.1 cents a page. Better journalism is actually slightly cheaper.
Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.
Information – Bloomberg terminals, stock newsletters – is a different business. Publishers flatter themselves when they argue they are in it.
What happens to publishing if you can’t sell content? You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for.
The first is probably the future of most current media. Give music away and make money from concerts and t-shirts. Publish articles for free and make money from one of a dozen permutations of advertising. Both publishers and investors are down on advertising at the moment, but it has more potential than they realize.
I’m not claiming that potential will be realized by the existing players. The optimal ways to make money from the written word probably require different words written by different people….
The reason I’ve been writing about existing forms is that I don’t know what new forms will appear. But though I can’t predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. When you see something that’s taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn’t have before, you’re probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that’s merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you’re probably looking at a loser.
4 Responses to “Did we ever pay for content?”
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September 22, 2009
[…] Another proposed business strategy is micropayments – or asking for small amounts of money in exchange for small amounts of content. Think iTunes and the music industry. And while I think this strategy worked well for musicians, I don’t see how it can work for journalists. Look at link journalism. Many people gather their news from their friends via emails or blogs with links. If just one organization requests payments for access to their news there are going to be a dozen more who don’t – and those are the links that will get regenerated, resent, retweeted. People will find a way to redistribute the news and will easily be able to forgo organizations that ask for money for content. Even if every major news organization decided to ask for payment for content, there would still be bloggers out there ready to distribute the news for audiences. And besides, did we ever really pay for content? […]
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September 22, 2009
[…] story, but if it’s merged with other content such as video, photography, and radio, it might change the consumers’ minds. With multimedia, The New York Times has done a stellar job in incorporating video, audio and audio […]
Owen
22. Sep, 2009
Since (sadly) Paul Graham doesn’t provide contact information on his site, I will have to respond here. Bullshit. Well, partial bullshit.
Consumer are of course buying content – you don’t decide to buy Time or the Economist based on the number of pages – you buy based on whether you want to read the articles (avoid obligatory Playboy joke here).
Publishers are in fact selling either content or a vehicle for advertising. In the magazine model almost all are selling a vehicle for advertising – and they know a LOT about that vehicle and what percentage of the magazine can be ads before it starts losing readers. The cover price of Time has never come CLOSE to paying for the production of the content. The ads are where the money is.
But some magazines and almost all books are a subscription or one off model. The publisher is selling the content for a price. Free content on the internet is only free because it is still stuck in the advertising is where the money is model. Or it is crap. Some publishers are finding lead generation models rather than advertising – but it is still the same – the good content costs you somehow.
The reason newspapers and magazines are struggling is because the revenue from online advertising is so poor and online advertising is easy to avoid. Either they will figure out how to increase the ad revenues or they will find a new way to get money or they will fold.
But it is the content the consumer wants – not the medium.
Kochnev Ilya
08. Dec, 2009
“The reason newspapers and magazines are struggling is because the revenue from online advertising is so poor and online advertising is easy to avoid.”
+1. In my country (Russia) that situation is similar.