The Online Content Sales Model

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YouTube and Baby Boomers
Why Aren't We All Telecommuting
Heart Shaped Kindle
Copyright Battles

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YouTube, Telecommuting, Kindle, Twitter, Fiction Income, Cartoon Income

A Free Life

-Andrew Grossman

July 4, 2009

In my case, as with many others who emancipate themselves from the 9 to 5 work schedule, there had never been a choice. I had to be free to choose how I would spend my time and how I would live my life. Perhaps I had been born that way, but if not, twenty years of working on a farm from before dawn until after dark and almost as many years of being told where to go, what to do and what to think in school had given me a feverish need to escape the 'normal' work world and make a living elsewhere.

Although I might have been willing to accept any way of making money to earn my freedom, the way that I preferred was to be paid for my creative work. I already knew there was no pleasure for me as great as creating. No other satisfaction could match the feeling of drawing, and of writing poetry. These pursuits, however, offered no viable income. The route toward making a living that so many fine artists and poets have taken since World War II-earn an MFA degree and become a college professor- was not available to me. I could not stand being in school any more than I could tolerate working in an office. In both worlds, there is a boss, and I was done with bosses.

Then, when I was twenty five years old, I found a possible solution: become a cartoonist. It literally occurred to me while walking down the street. Someone made the cartoons in the newspapers and the magazines. Someone was paid to do it. Maybe I could also be one of those fortunate people. Immediately I began writing and drawing cartoons. I studied what was being published. I refined the work. The first submission came quickly. The first rejections came even more quickly. For six months there was nothing but rejection. They did not matter. I had no other choice, and because I had no other choice I eventually broke through. Within two years I was able to quit my job and become a fulltime cartoonist.

The great writer, Henry Miller, spoke of the need for a writer to pursue his work with the desperation that only comes when you are backed up against a wall and have no place to escape. Such is the way that many feel who have the drive for freedom. It is not necessarily heroic to want to know what the world is like when one can move through it at will, without an eye on the clock, but surely the heroes of history have felt the need to break away from what oppresses them. Oppression of a race, of a country, or of an individual invariably can be reduced to the inequalities of conventional wisdom.

In 21st century America, the conventional wisdom is that a person must have the stability of a paycheck which arrives in your bank account every two weeks. In order to have this stability, people in our society are willing to cede their freedom to those who can provide the paycheck. One of the unforeseen blessings of the current depression is that more and more people realize that such stability, when being provided by an outside entity, such as a corporation or a manufacturer, is an illusion. People have been forced to scramble to earn money on their own, to become entrepreneurs, because the illusion has been punctured. Such puncturing is the rudest kind of dislocation, a chaos that I would not wish on anyone. When the economy improves, however, and the corporations and manufacturers begin to hire again, there will be a significant number of eligible workers who do not offer themselves up again. They have found freedom in pursuing their own capacities for earning money at home or with their own business.

This freedom takes the simplest forms in every day life. The need for money is still present. No one short of being rich enough to live on their savings can do without making money. Being free does not mean you do not work. The free, in fact, work harder for themselves than the outside employed work for others. Freedom is having the choice when to work. It was not ordained on high that humanity is most productive from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, as it was not ordained that school is the only place to learn about the world.

I wanted to know what happened in the world when everyone else was at work. What was it like to be on the highway when there was no rush hour traffic? What was it like to be in a grocery store without long lines, at the fitness club when a workout machine was available, in the middle of the woods when the paths were unclogged. Many others feel the same way. The reasons they give to themselves for not finding out-I will not be able to make a living, I will be unproductive if no one tells me what to do, I will be lonely-turn out to be fears without a basis. The day begins. Others rush off to work, the free go where they please, when they please. Once the propaganda they have been taught-there is only one way to live your life, there is only one kind of stability-begins to break up like an ice floe in the spring-they realize that the work police are not coming at any minute to break down their door and arrest them for non-conformity. They begin to realize they can do as they please with their time.

Once the realization comes, the free cannot go back. Nor do they wish to go back.

Category: Freelance Living, Cartoon Income, Fiction Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Star Posters

-Andrew Grossman

June 3, 2009

Use community board posters as what they are: assets. Most of the best writers on the internet do not have blogs-they are either 'lurking' on a site to decide if it is a place where they want to engage, or they are posting. Quality posters are the x factor in determining which social sites will succeed, and which niche communities within those sites will draw enough viewers to remain viable.

What are the characteristics of a quality poster?

-post often

-post positively-no site needs negativity, especially toward other posters

-write well-in internet terms this means reducing the spelling errors and writing coherently

-engage the other posters-rather than speak at the other posters, they respond to what they say

-start interesting threads-this means anticipate the community's core interests and start

a topic rolling that will draw ongoing community conversation

The best way to encourage and retain quality posters, short of paying them, is to create a community that welcomes intelligent and positive interaction around a core theme.

Category: Bandwidth Development, International Internet

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

An International Treaty for Bandwidth

-Andrew Grossman

May 27, 2009

As the proportion of customers with iPhones grows-5.9 million 3G iPhones were activated in the last three quarters in the US market-7.5% of AT&T's total subscribers-the resulting growth in downloading and Web browsing will strain AT&T's network. A recent analysis by Alcatel-Lucent of North American wireless network use during the midday hour on one day found Web browsing was consuming 32% of data-related airtime, but 69% of bandwidth, while email used 30% of data airtime but only 4% of bandwidth. AT&T will need to add cell towers, and spend more on the back-haul lines that connect the towers to the rest of the network. This constitutes a massive and ongoing capital outlay. Given the established public appeal of all-in-one smart phones, it is a commitment that AT&T is happy to make in the American market, as are others carriers invested in the next generation smart phones.

Bandwidth is expensive. As the Third World becomes increasingly computer integrated, first with laptops and desktops donated by international aid organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, there will be a call to set up a network that will wire these tens of millions of new users to the internet. Who will pay for the network? The expense of running towers and lines into the interior of continents that lack basic services such as electricity and fresh water will be overwhelming, and yet a population without the connection to the outside world provided by the internet cannot reasonably achieve a modern education, and in many cases cannot gain the perspective that promotes political and personal freedom.

Category: Bandwidth Development, International Internet

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Does the Medium Change the Message?

-Andrew Grossman

May 20, 2009

No doubt in the first years of the content for fee model, professional online content will be dominated by properties that are well known in the offline world. When people download fiction on their e-reader they will favor such names as Stephen King, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling. When they look to license a cartoon they will gravitate toward Dilbert, Baby Blues and other features at CartoonResource.com. Well known columnists in the hard copy newspaper world are, and will continue to be for some time, the names that people seek to find in their Google and ALOT searches.

The internet will spawn its own properties and famous creators. These creators will understand the specific characteristics and aesthetics of the internet, and even more importantly will understand in what ways the human brain, spirit and attention span have been changed by search and surfing. Also of prime importance to a creator is the main fact of the internet, and perhaps the single biggest fact to be considered in contemporary human society: the internet offers the potential to reach every single human being in the world right at this moment in time.

If every one in the world, every member of every race, religion, tribe, country, political belief and economic condition, will eventually be on the internet, why not create properties for them now? Internet creators have already accepted one condition: faith. Ten years ago, if you were spending precious work hours doing web development for e-commerce sites, it was because you believed that the potential of the internet would become a reality. Believe that still for the vast tracts of the world that lack the technology adaptation and political leadership to have access. The barriers will fall. Consider the importance, then, of creating an online novel, comic strip, music and movie library, that will provide a welcoming appeal to those who will soon meet us here.

Consider also the following characteristics, their connection to information and to the collective subconscious of humanity:

1. Hyperlinks between all knowledge, emotion, human experience, between all humans.

2. First hand accounts of life in all parts of the world, therefore avoiding a media filter.

3. Open space of close communication, and within the openness created by one-on-one communication,

the tantalizing chance at endless space provided by one-with-and-among-four billion communication.

This is a new universe we are creating.

Category: Kindle, Blogging

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Which Content Site Will Be the First to Win a Pulitzer?

-Andrew Grossman

May 18, 2009

Content sites that generate and house articles will be where journalists end up. The ones that last will make exclusive deals with e-readers to license their online content. The collapse of hard copy newspapers, which had looked like the end of the line for professional journalism, may only have forced a transition that had to occur eventually: the establishment of online journalism with its own set of standards and practices, based on and possibly at a higher level than offline standards. A reader cannot easily compare the quality of writing among journalists offline-who wants to subscribe to multiple newspapers?-but online a quality comparison is only a click away. What may seem ironic now is that the internet will prove to be a forum that takes literary and journalistic standards to their zenith. Readers will only want to pay for the best, and no writer wants to work at Wal-Mart.

Online journalism, rather than be rendered irrelevant as a paying model by the blogging world, now appears to be the main driver for the fee based content model. Although the attitude that all writing and art online should be free remains strong, there has been a major shift recently. What is driving us toward the acceptance of fees for content is the desire for quality. Internet users are discerning readers and viewers; in many ways they are the most literate audience possible, because surfing the internet is the equivalent of reading several newspapers and books each day.

What this top quality audience is getting in the online writing realm is a whole bunch of suckiness. The lack of quality writing online is not an indictment of bloggers-some bloggers are exceptional writers-but is because the online writing world is still being populated by the best writers in the country. They are coming on board faster and faster. They have no choice. Then the competition for eyeballs will begin in earnest. In the meantime, as bloggers realize that there is money to be made online, the most ambitious will stop thinking of themselves as diarists and realize that they are already on the cusp of having a paying writing career. At that point, their writing will become tighter. Money makes writing matter.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Newspaper Industry, Fiction Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Copyright and the Rights of Thieves

-Andrew Grossman

May 15, 2009

They want it all and they want it all the time and they want it all for free. Who are they? Content packagers, which is to say media companies who find it more cost effective to spend their money on marketing old content compilations of music, writing, cartoons, than on content licensing fees. Who are the other copyright thieves? The man or the woman in the cubicle with too much time on their hands who think it would be fun to download a cartoon from a licensing agency site and put it on their blog. Are they making money from that cartoon with their current usage? No. Does that mean they should be able to take a piece of copyrighted content and place it in a venue not approved by the creator? No, they should not.

Category: Copyright Laws

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

YouTube and Baby Boomers

-Andrew Grossman

May 11, 2009

YouTube offers baby boomers exactly what their generation has become best at: nostalgia. If you want to listen to and watch Spandau Ballet sing 'True', you can cue it up on YouTube. You don't have to listen to any of that darned hip hop-rap-whatever the new rage is music, you can listen to whatever makes you feel seventeen again. Baby boomers are big on feeling seventeen again, as have been all past generations, no matter how difficult it might have been for them when they were seventeen.

The same is true for tv shows and movies. Clips or entire episodes of 'Wild Wild West', 'Bat Man' (the original tv show starring Adam West and a host of KA-POW guest stars), 'The Brady Bunch', 'Easy Rider', 'Harold and Maude' and 'Animal House' are watched each day by the tens of thousands. Thanks to YouTube, for baby boomers it is always and forever 1974, and since some of these shows actually had entertainment appeal, the baby boomers get to share their cultural signposts with their children.

Category: YouTube

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Why Aren’t We All Telecommuting?

-Andrew Grossman

May 8, 2009

Various solutions have been offered to lower the amount of CO2 that is spewed into the atmosphere by the American automobile. Since the majority of automobile miles are logged in commuting to and from work, most of these solutions pertain to rush hour traffic. Here is a compendium of proposals, from smallest economic shift to biggest economic shift:

1. Incentivize and/or force all drivers to buy high mph cars.

1. 2. Divert financing from road maintenance to public transportation. Build more

subway and bus lines and then incentivize and/or force commuters to use them.

3. Incentivize and/or force commuters to abandon their suburban homes and move

to the city where they work. (This assumes that places of employment will

continue to locate themselves in cities, despite escalating tax rates.) Then, since

this mass relocation to cities would cause apartment rents to skyrocket, relocate

the urban poor to the abandoned suburban homes.

4. Incentivize and/or force commuters to abandon their suburban homes and move to

city. Then, since suburban homes are inherently energy inefficient, bulldoze them. Have all the population live within the confines of a small number of mega-metropolises which can be easily serviced by mass transportation.

5. Return to a subsistence farming agrarian economy. Outlaw the internal combustion engine. Outlaw imported or exported products. Incentivize and/or force people to go back to growing their own food, making their own clothes and learning how to entertain themselves without electronics.

What if we just use the internet and stay at home? The internet and individual company intranets have

the following capabilities: communication pathways (these can be used for every possible business

communication: consumer outreach for market research, business to business, in-house business

communication, product launch promotions, webinars, business meetings, etc); unlimited and secure

document storage; employee productivity monitoring. Which one of the reasons for employees to get

together under one roof are not handled just as well from remote home locations? Even standing around

the water cooler talking about last night's game came be handled in a virtual fashion.

Category: Online Databases, Telecommuting

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Heart Shaped Kindle

-Andrew Grossman

May 6, 2009

Functionality is the first priority of tech development. The immediate future designs of the Kindle and other e-readers will answer the needs of consumers to make reading text as easy on the eyes and on the fingers as possible, by using high def screen resolution, ez scroll bars and large format screens. 8.5 x 11 e-readers are planned. E-readers with wi-fi access are planned. At a point in the not distant future, tech designers and users will then have to ask some basic questions about e-readers:

1. how is this device different than a laptop?

2. how is this device different than a netbook?

3. will consumers use this for all their computing needs, or simply for reading?

4. if consumers will accept this device, where do we put the keyboard?

5. do I want to be able to fold the screen for greater portability?

The history of tech devices has one definitive pattern: when consumers get turned onto using a device for one purpose-such as making calls with a cellphone-they will eventually be willing to use the same device for all purposes-see the smart phone-if the interface is convenient enough. Will the e-reader follow the same trajectory?

Size will be a major factor, as will price. The current trend is to make the screen bigger, but that is within the context of using e-readers only for reading. If the decision is made to turn e-readers into the next smart phone, the size will then become smaller. It will never be as convenient to carry an 8.5 x 11 e-reader as it is to carry a smart phone. Does that mean the e-reader cannot win the race for being everybody’s everything?

The e-reader may ultimately be running a different race: to mold the future interface of the consumer with the internet. The internet has two overarching characteristics that seem self-contradicting: it is too large for one person to comprehend; and it can be whittled down to as small a sampling as the individual wants. Rather like the universe, isn’t it? Google Search has aided both sides of the equation. Type in a term, almost any term, and the number of results are overwhelming. But as Google Search has progressed, they have focused less on returning EVERYTHING, and realized that what the consumer wants to achieve with search is REACHING THE ONE RIGHT THING.

For genre fiction fans, who make up the bulk of the fiction reading public, the one right thing is to find a book which fits into their preferred genre, which hits the high notes that they seek in their genre reading. Ultimately, the market for e-readers will be defined by the same niche product demands that fuels all internet communities and product sales. The e-reader’s design will be defined by the specific content that the reading public wants. There will be e-readers designed and sold specifically for mystery novel fans. There will be e-readers designed and sold specifically for horror novel fans. And there will certainly be e-readers designed and sold specifically for romance novel fans.

The last may come in the shape of a heart.

Category: Kindle

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

The First Novel Written on Twitter

-Andrew Grossman

May 5, 2009

The first novel written exclusively on Twitter is about a man named Jack Bzli who is a former high level government operative, the dog that loves him, and a secret …

When Stephen King was originally asked to be the first writer to compose and publish an entire novel directly on Twitter, he turned to the company’s representative and said …

The door to the ancient hothouse rattled in the crosscurrent of an unseen breeze. As he turned the handle, Jack could see the tendrils of long dead plants hanging limply in the …

Then, just as the flame of the plant demon’s funereal pyre seemed at last to subside, the face of Stephanie Zonder Platt, horribly cut and pasted onto the body of a cackling, three legged …

The installment novel is back. Charles Dickens popularized the form in mid-19^th century England with the story that eventually became his first novel, ‘The Pickwick Papers’. Readers in the United States also proved to be mad for the form. Circulation of magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post reached its peak in the 1930’s and 40’s, partly because of the huge popularity of serialized novels by Hemingway, Dos Passos and other novelists. More recently, Stephen King wrote ‘The Green Mile’ in installment form.

The idea of an installment novel is to have each installment achieve two things at once:

entertain the reader with new action in an ongoing adventurous story; and
keep the reader panting for more by cutting off the new action at a dramatic high point

The format of Twitter lends itself to a unique form of serialized fiction. In daily, hourly or moment-to-moment installments of 140 characters, a writer can build the ultimate roller coaster ride of an action story. A novel written via tweets would have an enormous built-in audience.

Writing in such small portions, a novelist would need to develop a superb sense of pace to keep the reader’s interest. Make each tweet nothing but action verb piled on action verb in a constant pounding forward movement, and the writer will risk burning out the reader.

Twitter offers the possibility of a completely new relationship between author and reader. Constant real time access to the reader, and constant real time access to the writer. When a reader can change the course of a novel by his feedback during the composition of the work, what is the difference between the writer and the reader? They have become collaborators.

The writer sits at his desk-no, he doesn’t need to sit at his desk any longer. He writes while walking down the street. He writes while riding on the subway. He knows that the current installment is being read as he writes it. Before the current sentence is finished, his readers have begun reading the sentence.

What is this moment’s installment going to be about? Part of the answer may be: it is about what will have the most impact on the reader at this moment. A novel written and read in real time offers the possibility of having a maximum impact on the reader because the writer knows what his readers are doing as they read. It is 7:34 in the morning. My readers are on the subway. What would be most diverting to them on the subway?

Category: Twitter, Fiction Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Freedom

-Andrew Grossman

May 4, 2009

From the first moment that a creative thinks of making a living through her freelance work, and thus be able to structure her time as she pleases, coming and going on her own schedule, working in a home office, on the bed, on the porch, under the tree in the backyard or at Starbucks, the internet becomes the key to freedom. Every step in the process is involved with the internet. What is the most secure place to write and store your work? The internet. What is the fastest and cheapest method through which to send your work to end users? The internet. What is the best way to do background research for your work? The internet. What is the fastest, most secure way to receive payment for your work? The internet.

The internet has leveled all playing fields for the freelancer. No longer is there the need for a middle man between the creative and the public. Those middle men have been known by various names in various professions over the years-publishers, syndicates, music companies, studios-but they have always offered the same dream: sign this contract, give me 90% of the future revenue of your work, and I will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. I will give your work to the world. I will make you famous and wealthy. I will handle the business of this business so that you can spend all of your time doing what you most want to do: create.

It's a good dream. Of the small percentage of creatives who have been offered the dream by a middle man, a small percentage have actually achieved fame and fortune. Of those, a small percentage did not eventually come to resent the control exerted over their careers by these production and marketing firms known as middle men. And then there are all the others whose careers were blighted by the old economy process. All those creatives who never really launched their careers because they could not interest a middle man in offering them a contract. Without a contract, the creative's assumption was that she did not have the talent to write or act or draw or sign for a living.

Most people do not have the talent, but the question of what appeals to the public should be answered by the public, not by the middle men. The internet brings creatives directly to the public. No longer are creatives enslaved by the opinions of production and marketing firms. Production and marketing firms do not take risks. They give their support to creative work that is as close as possible to a sure thing, which means they want books that read like books that are already best sellers, they want songs that sound like the songs that are already Top 40 and movies that are sequels or prequels to already popular movies.

The irony is that the most popular creative work is always groundbreaking. There was nothing like 'Harry Potter' or 'Star Wars' or 'Doonesbury' before these juggernauts came along. The public wants the new and the different and the unusual. The online channel flows directly from creator to end user. Your vision is alive on the internet, and reaching in real time the imaginations of tens of millions of potential fans across the world.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Music Industry, Fiction Income, Cartoon Income, Online Sales

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Didn't You Used to Be in the Boer War?

-Andrew Grossman

April 30, 2009

YouTube content to this point has been dominated by clips from tv shows, concerts and movies, rather than the entire broadcast. This is because of YouTube’s desire to avoid copyright infringement suits from media companies. Although increasingly the content available on YouTube will be full length broadcasts, the short form has already had a large impact on changing viewer habits: small is better. Better for rapid viewing at your cubicle while the boss is in his office. Better for giving you all of the warm feelings you had at that moment in the movie theatre when you saw the entire movie. Better for providing a concentrated burst to the part of your mind that is satiated by romance or violence or beautiful music.

Unknown supporting actors and backup musicians are being recognized on the street now because something they appeared in twenty or thirty years ago, a show, a concert, that had not been rebroadcast since the time of release, is getting tens of thousands of downloads on YouTube. As with so much else online, a viewer begins looking for one thing-the number of casualties in the Boer War, for instance, by going to Wikipedia--which leads to looking for something else-what was that movie with the woman who was married to the guy in the Boer War movie, by going to IMDB-to finding something altogether unexpected on YouTube-wow, I didn’t know she was in a tv show with this actress whose name I couldn’t remember who used to sing with Air Supply.

The segmenting of creative work that began as an underground way for viewers to upload a few bits of beloved shows has grown into a preferred form for viewers. The preference extends to all long forms. Fiction, especially with the global hypertext features applied by Google for its 10 million book database, will become viewed in small snippets by readers, even with the option to read a book straight through. Novelists who write powerful short scenes will flourish, those who are superb at epic length, but not exciting in bursts, will diminish.

The connection between creator and audience has always been one of surprise, both delightful and dismaying. The meaning of a scene or a character or a line or a drawing is very different in the creator’s mind than is perceived by a majority of readers. In the offline world, this variety of interpretations was ultimately seen as a compliment to the evocative nature of a creator’s imagination. Eventually, the online world, in its far greater capacity to fragment and deconstruct and analyze and disfigure and miraculously expand a creator’s work, will come to be perceived as the same horrible beautiful process that begins when the ‘Publish’ button is pushed.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Fiction Income, YouTube

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Individually Wrapped Chocolates

-Andrew Grossman

April 29, 2009

Creatives hate databases. The internet is a difficult selling atmosphere for creatives

because almost all selling is done from databases. When a whole bunch of something

is thrown together, the unique quality of each piece is undercut. Steven Spielberg

likes it no more than any other creative. He wants his movies to be sold one at a time,

with their own stipulations that honor his standing, and not sold as part of a massive

library sale to TNT or Hulu or any other broadcast company.

Each movie, each song, each novel, each article, each cartoon, was a chunk out of

a creative's life. If the work was successful enough to sell, it came only after many

years of struggle and paucity of monetary success. The creation came from the

unique mind and imagination of the creator, and the idea that it will be shoveled into

a massive trough of content for sale is objectionable. Many creatives will not let it

happen: they refuse to include their work into databases, except those they create.

The assumption has also been made, and supported, that database selling brings in

far less money per creative piece. Databases have become one of the three great enemies

of price supports for creative work online. Another is the internet tradition, going back

to the first exchanges of academic research papers in the 1970's, that content should

be as free as the wind blows. The third is the presence of amateurs online, who are

happy to sell their work for free because they just do it 'for fun' or because they believe

that giving something away is a precursor to getting paid.

The culture of free is changing slowly. The sales vehicle of databases will be unlikely

to change. Like so many other 'convenience' aspects of the internet, such as being able

to have sports scores and stats updated from second to second and being able to date

128 people at once, database selling is what the buyer wants. It has changed how buyers

view and think of content. In movie database searches, buyers typically base their keyword

searches on genre rather than an actor's name. The same is true in the fiction world.

Cartoon searches are made by topic keywords, not by cartoonist's name.

Quantify it. That is the dictum of the internet content buyer. The creative's sense of self

is shifting as the studio has been sucked into the box.

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Fiction Income, Cartoon Income, Online Databases

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

The Jolly Creative

-Andrew Grossman

April 27, 2009

Katie Vogel is the star of a new reality show to be broadcast on YouTube, called

'Green Eyed World'. Vogel is a previously unknown singer-songwriter from England,

with a bubbling personality and a cute but not threateningly beautiful look. By that,

I mean she has the super-average persona which increasingly appears to be what plays

well with an internet specific viewing audience. The internet is the ultimate leveling

field: small group of dedicated people can build a company on the web to the billion

dollar valuation level; anyone can be the star of their own blog; all opinions are welcome

without accreditation or curse filters usually required.

How will these egalitarian characteristics effect web content? Let me put it another

way: if you were an author who is selling her novel via an internet selling page, would

the photograph of you on the 'bio' page show you smiling or unsmiling? The web may

be an unwelcoming atmosphere for the 'Olympian' persona effected by many authors.

Purchasers of books or other creative content on the web may need to feel the creative

is their buddy/equal/confidant in order to purchase her work. There are no intimidating

brick and mortar temples to the intellect such as Brentano's on the web. Distance does

not play well.

The successfully selling web author will be involved in the purchase process right

up to the moment when the buyer clicks the PayPal button. Questions such as, 'Will

I like this book?' and 'Are there scary parts?' will be routine. After the sale, the author

will be engaged in community boards with readers who are currently reading her title.

Feedback will be instantaneous, constant and possibly overwhelming. The book tour

will be 24/7 in real time. Ultimately, more and more books will be merely supervised

by the 'author', and actually written in conjunction with dozens of collaborators and

fans.

Category: Online Sales, Fiction Income, YouTube

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or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Future Blogger Income

-Andrew Grossman

April 24, 2009

Yesterday, AT&T gave testimony before a House subcommittee regarding the need

for stricter standards to protect consumer privacy online. Specifically, many consumers

resent having details of their web surfing culled by tech companies and then sold

to advertisers for the purpose of developing targeted ads. Telecom companies such as

AT&T have been criticized for an experiment called 'deep packet inspection'. This

technology gathers info about web users by examining the data on their networks.

Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo increasingly use such information to develop and

sell targeted ads.

The standards to which we hold media companies today will effect the individual

content site owner of the future. Consider that a primary source of revenue for

bloggers is to sell space on their sites for product promotions. For instance, the owner

of a popular blog for mothers is paid to publish promo text about a new baby stroller

Viewers assume that the site owner is recommending the product because of personal

experience, not because of being paid.

Additionally, the blogger's list of viewers, as established through means such as an

opt-in newsletter signup, is of value to advertisers. Such a list is pre-sorted because

of the topic of the site, meaning the blogger is essentially providing focus group results

for marketers. The more viewers the more valuable the list. Ethically, however, it is a

no-no to take viewers info for one purpose, such as a subscription, and sell the info for

another purpose, such as ad targeting.

How to get around this? One way, of course, is to tell viewers that a sign-up would

make their info available to marketers. The majority of viewers would then refuse to

sign. Some companies offer an inducement, such as a free gift or subscription, for

signing. Could bloggers economically do the same? Yes they could. In fact, the same

companies that pay for promos now could provide part of the payment in branded

products. The owner of 'www.pipesmokersanonymous.com' could negotiate a payment

of 2000 pipe cases with the site name emblazoned of them, in return for access to

the viewer contact. The viewer would be happy with the free gift, the site owner

would be happy with the free product giveaway, the marketing company would be

happy with the info.

It's all about the viewer numbers. When bloggers understand the value of what

they know about viewer habits, the price for the knowledge will skyrocket.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Online Marketing, Online Sales

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Cartoon Branding

-Andrew Grossman

April 23, 2009

The online sales culture for content promises to radically change the relationship

between contract cartoonists and their home magazines/websites. Specifically,

the low expense of publishing and drop shipping books through print on demand,

rather than risking print runs upfront that may not sell, makes it affordable for an

individual cartoonist with a substantial fan following to be his/her own publisher.

Logically, the same capacity for matching production runs directly to orders will be

available for the sale of cartoon t-shirts, tote bags, calendars and other products.

25 years ago the leading magazines in the country that included cartoon content were

National Lampoon, Playboy and The New Yorker. National Lampoon ceased publication

in 1998, but the other two magazines continue to flourish in their hard copy editions:

Playboy reports a worldwide circulation of 6.3 million as of October 2008; the New Yorker

reports that their circulation is over a million, and has increased an average of 3%

annually over the last five years.

The power of the Playboy and New Yorker brand name has always added lustre to the

reputations of their contract cartoonists. Eldon Dedini, Gahan Wilson and Shel

Silverstein based much of their fame on their Playboy presence, and a large number of

outstanding cartoonists, such as Charles Addams, Charles Barsotti, Roz Chast and

George Booth followed similar career arcs through the New Yorker's pages.

The question now is: once a cartoonist has built a fan following through association

with the big two magazines, do they still need the active connection, or can they, like

movie stars, become their own producer and make a much heftier share of the sales profits.

Each magazine has established a sizable online presence. Playboy's attempt to avoid

cannibalizing their hard copy sales has come through a strategy of refusing to allow

fully nude photos and videos unless viewers subscribe to the Cyber Club, which

costs as little as $7.95 per month. Text content, such as the famous Playboy Interviews,

is available in its entirety without an online subscription, and cartoons can be

viewed for free in a slide show format. What this suggests, of course, is that in the

online world, Playboy assumes their soft porn pictorials have more value than

their other content.

The New Yorker goes even farther in offering free content online. Virtually the entire

content of the current issue is available for free. Also, by signing up for an online account,

the viewer has free access to much of the New Yorker archives going back to 1925.

For a small fee the viewer can have full access. Product sales of New Yorker cartoons

are offered through their cartoon store at CartoonBank.com. Revenue is split between

the New Yorker and the individual cartoonist, but the prime online revenue that really

counts to Conde Nast, the New Yorker's publisher, is ad sales, and subscriptions to

the hard copy magazine, as well as to other CN titles, such as GQ, Gourmet and Vanity Fair.

There would be a price to pay if a contract cartoonist broke away from the New Yorker's

sales engine in favor of selling through their own store, but would the price be economic?

Contracts can be renegotiated, or one party can choose not to re-up. Does Roz Chast need

the New Yorker at this point in her career, or does the market value of her work now depend

solely on her brand name?

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Cartoon Income, Online Sales

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Plugging Content Holes

-Andrew Grossman

April 20, 2009

For content owners and creators, the internet is a sieve. The holes through which free

content can be acquired are everywhere. Until those holes are plugged, the content for

fee model will be difficult to implement. Why pay when you can surf to another site

and find similar content for free?

That question bedevils every online content provider from Viacom to professional

cartoonists and writers. Within that question are many others, such as: If I put my work

on the internet, will it be stolen without compensation? How can I compete for sales to

non-discriminating buyers when there are amateurs who offer for free what I am trying

to sell? And the existential: how can I continue to be a freelance creator in the new

online content world?

The answer that has been tried by media companies is to identify certain end users

who are guilty of copyright infringement and go after them in court. Hearing of these

cases, the millions of web users who know that they also have been guilty of copyright

infringement by the old economy definition of the term, took to the forums and reviled

these 'overbearing' companies. The PR hit was large. The frustration that selective

enforcement had not stemmed the tide of illegal use led companies to conclude that there

must be a better way to keep their industry from being bankrupted.

The new answer is to accept that the movie and music on DVD industry is dead. The

formula now is to accept that revenue from downloads may never reach old levels. While

this may be the case, the success of the itunes store coupled with the wild popularity

of the newest portable music players, has given the industry hope that many millions of

song downloads for 99 cents may someday equal less many millions of DVD sales for

$24.95. In the meantime, there are always concert ticket sales and merchandise.

In other words, the program of plugging the holes where free content leaks has largely

been abandoned by large companies. This abandonment is a complete disaster for individual

creatives, who are caught between the hell of rampant copyright infringement and the

heaven of the possibility that the internet may allow individuals to circumvent the big

companies and control their own careers.

Someone else must plug the holes, one by one, case by case, culture change by culture

change. This long campaign will be left to the small creators. Their chances of success will

be dramatically improved if they can band together, work together as a unified force with

sufficient legal heft. It won't be enough to highlight a few of the guilty and hope that the

rest of the guilty will desist. That has already failed. What is needed is a uniform approach,

combining the minutiae of communicating through every internet form that stealing will

not be tolerated and a pr campaign that drives home the message.

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Copyright Laws, Cartoon Income, Artist Rights

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Big Kindle & The League of Extraordinary Creators

-Andrew Grossman

April 16, 2009

A new, larger version of the Kindle electronic book reader is going to be released by

Amazon in 2009. The exact size of the new Kindle has not been announced, but other

companies who are working on e-reader hardware are planning on going much larger.

Plastic Logic Ltd. is releasing an e-reader by early 2010 that will have an 8.5 by 11 screen.

Asian suppliers for several e-readers have been producing screens with a diagonal

measurement of about 10 inches.

The benefits of larger screen sizes are several:

1. easier display of larger format content, such as newspapers and textbooks

2. more screen space for advertisements, which are currently not used on the smaller Kindle's

3. ease of home use with the combination of scroll buttons and larger font size

The continuing formula for assessing consumer wants is striking. Hardware is manufactured

based on the determination of the projectable market for the hardware, as opposed to the

projectable market for the content that the hardware will access. This is analogous to

newspaper publishers trying to draw more subscribers by making the ink brighter, instead

of focusing on increasing the appeal of the content.

At some point, consumers will stop buying devices merely because they like how the

buttons are arrayed, and start basing their buying decisions more on the accessible content.

This process would be accelerated if all devices did not provide access to all content, which is

currently the case. When e-readers offer more or less the same user features, and they soon

will, manufacturers will finally seek a differentiation based on unique content. For instance,

a 'Get Fuzzy' comic lover will buy the e-reader that allows access to 'Get Fuzzy' over one

that does not.

In anticipation of that day, a league that brings together content providers from all areas-

comics, fiction, articles, music, film, etc.-would have great bargaining power. In fact,

such a league would have the economic and market power to actually COMMISSION

manufacturers to make the type of electronic content delivery device that the league decides

is best designed to deliver their content brand.

This entry is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Category: Cartoon Income, Kindle, Newspaper Industry

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

The Huge Carrot

-Andrew Grossman

April 15, 2009

Media companies have been unwilling to face the reality that consumers will not pay for films

on the internet. Media companies have tried the carrot and stick approach-offering a free clip

from a movie, but charging to download the entire film-to total failure.

The reason? Consumers, especially male consumers, have not only become accustomed

to free, they have also come to prefer small samples of media. The conventional wisdom that a

consumer who likes part of a movie for free will pay for the entire movie is completely false. What

should be understood is that consumers PREFER to see only their favorite parts of a movie. Since

typically the free samples offered are the most memorable scenes, there is nothing more for

the consumer to want.

If a man can see the battle scenes from Braveheart for free, he is not going to sit at his computer

yearning to pay for the love scenes.

This entry is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Category: Film Industry, TV/Internet

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or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

The Tweet Fee

-Andrew Grossman

April 14, 2009

Have you ever received a personal email from Ashton Kutcher? Neither have I. I do, however, along with 87,000 or so other people, follow Ashton's tweets. He just likes to say hi, or talk about the noisy construction coming from his neighbor's house, or ruminate on the Lakers chances in the playoffs. Just chit-chatty kind of stuff, but I have really gotten hooked on seeing what this guy has going on. I almost feel like we are pals. It's gotten to the point where one of the main reasons I access Twitter is to catch up with my bud.

Now consider that Twitter, which is currently talking with Google about partnering up, is in the elusive business of making serious money from a social networking site. No media company is completely sure how to do that yet, but they know it involves getting ads in some form in front of viewers without alienating the viewers to the extent that they go to another site. To achieve this the viewer must not feel she is being sold a product, but rather is sharing a lifestyle with a friend. Thus, rather than put ads on existing shows, or product endorsements on other people's movies, advertisers are producing their own shows in which the characters use the products in their every day lives.

Pair up this trend with the amazing ability of Ashton to draw people to Twitter. His micro-blog of 140 characters of content is a major selling vehicle if Twitter can figure out how to fit an ad facing on a tweet entry. What form would this ad take? A link at the bottom of the tweet to an ad display on the cell phone? A direct product endorsement from Ashton in his tweet? The real breakthrough has already been made: through the combo of the human attraction to tecky devices, which movie stars share with the rest of us, and the speedy sharing of your 'personal' life that Twitter allows, the ad industry can now draw on a direct relationship between endorser and consumer. Taking advantage of the interchange will be relatively simple.

Next on the Twitter front: the first novel written and published by Stephen King in 140 character tweet installments.

Category: Twitter, Celebrity Content, Copyright Laws

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or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Cost Cutting Through Repackaging

-Andrew Grossman

April 13, 2009

If you read an article in the daily newspaper or the online version of the paper and the text of the article sounds familiar, it is probably because you have read it before. Which is to say, you are reading repackaged content that has been reprinted by one branch of a media group-say, one of its community newspapers-into another branch. Repackaging costs less than purchasing new content. Editors know they usually have distinctly separate audiences for different publications. The content can appear fresh, even if it has already been published.

Publishers save money by repackaging content, if they already own all rights.. Typically, when the company first makes the purchase from the content provider, they ask for reprint rights within their own group. They also typically ask for the right to publish the content online with no additional payment to the creator. Seldom does the creative realize how much money is being signed away. These rights can result in many additional appearances of the content, such as:

1. repackaging of original magazine content into a book compilation

2. repackaging of music by an individual artist into a compilation of various artists

3. repackaging of music by an individual artist into a greatest hits album

4. assumption of 'download rights' when the original sale of a cartoon is for one-time rights

5. reprint of an article sold to a daily newspaper into all editions of the publishing group's weekly newspapers

All of this possible future income can be realized by the creative if the language is in the original contract, but seldom does the artist, especially if she is early in her career, have the knowledge to ask for a separate negotiation of subsidiary rights.

In the era of online publishing, when content is almost exclusively presented as part of a massive database, directed by a database administrator, a royalty for future sales is more valuable than a lump sum up-front payment.

Category: Music Industry, Newspaper Industry, Article Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

The Kindle Pit

-Andrew Grossman

April 9, 2009

The popularity of Amazon's electronic-book device, Kindle, has electrified the market. E-book readers have been around for years, but none of them provided the connectivity and the depth of content provided by Kindle. Even Sony's own entry in the market, Reader, does not provide wireless access. But it soon will. And many other offerings will follow from additional tech companies coupled with additional wireless services. Five companies have already applied to Verizon, which provides wireless access, for new e-book devices. AT&T will soon jump in with an announcement of their first agreement with a device manufacturer. Nothing succeeds like access.

The effect of reading devices on the income of writers has not yet become clear, but the fervent nature of consumer content demands is very well established. On April 8, a group called The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents disabled readers, staged a protest outside the Authors Guild's New York offices. The reason for the protest: the Guild, when it negotiated a vast content sale on behalf of its members last year, refused to allow a blanket availability of content to the text-to-speech function, which is built into Kindle. The reason for the refusal is that the Guild felt such access would

be a major threat to the billion dollar audio book market.

One result of the Guild's intent to protect the income and rights of its member: limiting the rights of the disabled. Is the Guild at fault? Only of wanting to slow down content access in order to examine rather writers are cannibalizing their sales in print without achieving equal dollars from e-book download sales. The hesitancy is justified, in order to study the implications of such access, and to conduct this study without the warp speed of consumer device advances. Devices demand enormous databases of content-the Kindle offers more than 260,000 books, plus newspapers-and such quantity cannot help but lessen the author's sense of the integrity and the uniqueness of individual works.

What we know, but only the first implications, are the insatiable content demands of current devices. What creatives fear even more are the heightened demands of future e-book devices, and the likely expectation, from manufacturers, from network providers and from the public, of ever more access for ever less money.

This entry is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Category: Kindle, Fiction Income, Author's Guild

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or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

Creatives Fight to Survive

-Andrew Grossman

April 8, 2009

The fight against unauthorized use of copyrighted content on the Web is not merely being taken up by large media outlets such as AP, which on Monday announced that they will pursue copyright infringement suits against web sites that use work from AP without permission. Individual content creators are also part of this life and death struggle for payment and control of how and where their content is used. Professional writers, journalists, columnists, cartoonists, illustrators, photographers and film makers are on the front line of this battle. What is at stake is their capacity to make a living from their creative work. In other words, their careers.

In the Old Media, freelance creatives in print media sold their work to magazines and newspapers. Some would eventually sign contracts with media companies such as United Media and King Features to distribute their work in return for splitting the profits. Others were able to forge successful careers by representing their interests directly in sales to print media. That success has now been made inestimably more difficult by the advent of the internet.

At first, when the internet was young, the sale of rights was made in a package-the primary rights, those that would allow media to publish the content in hardcopy editions, were what the publication was purchasing. Subsidiary rights, for online publication, were considered too minor to charge additional money for. Print media certainly treated online rights this way, since there was no prospect of generating additional revenue from online editions.

As the internet has matured, and as hardcopy publishing is moving rapidly toward near extinction, the online rights are now the primary reason for purchase. Print publication has become the subsidiary sale. That means that for profit creatives have been sucked into surviving in the internet world, and that means that individuals face the same daunting task as media companies-how do we make money in this new form? What complicates the formula is the tradition of the internet, back to the pre-dawn of web

history, for providing an open source culture. Open source essentially means that everyone shares and shares alike, no money changes hands.

Battling this online model is now the primary and formidable task of media and its content providers. The enemy comes in many forms: amateur artists who 'are just delighted to be published on the web'; bloggers who have never expected to be paid, since most of them approach their work as non-information oriented diarists; savvy creatives who have assumed that offering free content online will swell the audience for their work and thus make offline sales more likely; overseas creatives who look

at the internet as a chance to break into the American market.

They are all making one fundamental mistake-they do not realize that the internet will soon be the only surviving content delivery system. There will be no other forum in which to sell content. It must happen online or not happen at all. Given these parameters, the imperative of the new model has changed how to conduct a creative career: it is no longer of paramount importance whether the content is of highest quality (although quality is still a factor in become a professional). All that matters is name branding. All that matters is strengthening the perceived value of what you present electronically.

Category: Copyright Laws, Article Income, Cartoon Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.

The Migration Escalates

-Andrew Grossman

April 7, 2009

A deal was concluded last week between Google, the owner of YouTube, and Walt Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN. This deal marks another step forward in the competition between broadcast media to attract the most viewers to their online content, and thus eventually to draw sufficient ad revenue to offset the lost revenue of tv ad dollars. Here is the deal: Walt Disney agreed to allow short videos of sports highlights and clips from ABC shows and ESPN to be made accessible for download on YouTube. In return, Google agreed to share revenue derived from ad purchases during the YouTube broadcasts.

Yet another step forward in the evolution of content delivery moving from tv to the internet. What does it mean?

1. Other networks who provide online content, such as CBS on CBS.com (they offer two minute to six minute clips of popular shows such as CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, The Mentalist and Survivor), Hulu.com, owned by Fox, TVland.com (owned by Viacom International), now are forced yet again to up the ante of their free content offerings or face a strategic loss in the race for future ad dollars.

2. Another concession by Walt Disney to the revolution: the crumbling of the wall between internet broadcast and tv broadcast.

3. In the 'can you top this' competition between networks, we are coming closer to the inevitable: the availability of full CURRENT episodes of all tv shows and the availability of JUST RELEASED TO THE THEATRE movies for internet broadcast.

4. The rapid switch of Walt Disney's production to 3-D movies such as 'Monsters and Aliens'. Quite soon 3-D will be one of the few value added characteristics of theatre released movies. That is, until online media companies figure out how to broadcast 3-D movies on computer monitors.

As the character in 'No Country for Old Men' said: What's coming is coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Category: TV/Internet, YouTube

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted at andrew@andrewgrossman.net.