A few different examples of the problems of "cultural production economics."
When I traveled in Nigeria, Niger and Mali in the 1990s, I found Arabic-language books by local authors published with the phrase "under the patronage of so-and-so." When I asked about this, an aspiring author explained that there was no publishing company which would invest in paying an author and publishing the author's book in the hope of generating revenue through sales of the book, mostly due to the lack of spending power of the books' likely audience. So authors sought patrons who would basically sponsor publication of the books, usually by presses in Libya or Egypt, and the authors would handle "marketing and distribution" any way they knew how.
The second is the marketing and distribution of the stolen Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson video tape as portrayed in the Hulu series "Pam and Tommy." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13659418/ The thief found that his sales of "high-quality" (because they were VHS tapes copied from the original) videos were undermined by people selling copies of the the tapes they bought from him. The entity that eventually made a lot of money was an early online pornography site with a paywall which persuaded Lee and Anderson to "sell" their tape to it so it could enforce a copyright claim on all the bootleg copiers.
The rapper Immortal Technique's 1987 song "Freedom of Speech" extols the economic and artistic virtues of his self-publishing model. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=nAEbWSSo9AQ&si=A6hJhNUUUAusuyJg I imagine the "selling CDs from the trunk of your car model" stopped working when people learned how to rip and burn music CDs, which is why you can now listen to Immortal Technique on YouTube Music.
As many of us, I once had a dalliance with writing fiction, and I used to listen to a podcast about self-publishing. The author claimed you could make a lot of money doing this, as the share of revenue the author could earn is much higher than in the traditional USA publishing model. Bit even that podcast admitted that having a reputation, particularly one built on a commercially successful literary work, helped tremendously. In addition, having multiple products to sell was important, because fans of one book would be likely to purchase more books from the same author.
The best thing about Substack is the fact that they don’t charge us to give our gravy away for free. I hope that doesn't change. Having to pay for the ability to share words that you're not trying to commercialize just seems like vanity press to me.
I much prefer your commentary to Mollick's: he doesn't appear to sympathise with students, takes a weird anti-human stance, and aligns himself so closely with techbro overlords that i've wondered if he is on their payroll.
The gift of a free ride is big, as is the ad-free reading experience. As someone who does not want to spend a lot of time on getting text to look good on a screen, I appreciate the perfectly okay software for publishing, especially at the price.
I have a more favorable impression of what Mollick does as a writer. He is an unabashed enthusiast about this stuff, and writes like it. As more of a skeptic, I like having someone thoughtful taking an opposing view, even when I think it misses something important.
A few different examples of the problems of "cultural production economics."
When I traveled in Nigeria, Niger and Mali in the 1990s, I found Arabic-language books by local authors published with the phrase "under the patronage of so-and-so." When I asked about this, an aspiring author explained that there was no publishing company which would invest in paying an author and publishing the author's book in the hope of generating revenue through sales of the book, mostly due to the lack of spending power of the books' likely audience. So authors sought patrons who would basically sponsor publication of the books, usually by presses in Libya or Egypt, and the authors would handle "marketing and distribution" any way they knew how.
The second is the marketing and distribution of the stolen Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson video tape as portrayed in the Hulu series "Pam and Tommy." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13659418/ The thief found that his sales of "high-quality" (because they were VHS tapes copied from the original) videos were undermined by people selling copies of the the tapes they bought from him. The entity that eventually made a lot of money was an early online pornography site with a paywall which persuaded Lee and Anderson to "sell" their tape to it so it could enforce a copyright claim on all the bootleg copiers.
The rapper Immortal Technique's 1987 song "Freedom of Speech" extols the economic and artistic virtues of his self-publishing model. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=nAEbWSSo9AQ&si=A6hJhNUUUAusuyJg I imagine the "selling CDs from the trunk of your car model" stopped working when people learned how to rip and burn music CDs, which is why you can now listen to Immortal Technique on YouTube Music.
As many of us, I once had a dalliance with writing fiction, and I used to listen to a podcast about self-publishing. The author claimed you could make a lot of money doing this, as the share of revenue the author could earn is much higher than in the traditional USA publishing model. Bit even that podcast admitted that having a reputation, particularly one built on a commercially successful literary work, helped tremendously. In addition, having multiple products to sell was important, because fans of one book would be likely to purchase more books from the same author.
The publication of your post interrupted my reading of Ruha Benjamin's "Race After Technology." So back to it. https://www.ruhabenjamin.com/race-after-technology
The best thing about Substack is the fact that they don’t charge us to give our gravy away for free. I hope that doesn't change. Having to pay for the ability to share words that you're not trying to commercialize just seems like vanity press to me.
I much prefer your commentary to Mollick's: he doesn't appear to sympathise with students, takes a weird anti-human stance, and aligns himself so closely with techbro overlords that i've wondered if he is on their payroll.
The gift of a free ride is big, as is the ad-free reading experience. As someone who does not want to spend a lot of time on getting text to look good on a screen, I appreciate the perfectly okay software for publishing, especially at the price.
I have a more favorable impression of what Mollick does as a writer. He is an unabashed enthusiast about this stuff, and writes like it. As more of a skeptic, I like having someone thoughtful taking an opposing view, even when I think it misses something important.