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How to Adjust the Creative Ego to Database Selling
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The internet is a difficult selling atmosphere for creatives
because almost all selling is done from databases, and creatives hate
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 on an actor's name. The same is true in
the fiction world. Cartoon searches are made by topic keywords, not by
cartoonist's name. This new way of search is an affront to the creatives's ego. If genre or topic is the only criteria for a purchase,
then of what importance is the creator's unique style? As long as the
viewer gets his horror movie or mystery novel fix, does he care about
the individuality of who gave it to him?
Selling through a database is the equivalent of a
fashion show in which, rather
than one model walking the runway wearing one outfit, the runway is
packed with tens of thousands of models. Before an individual choice is
made the buyer wants to be reassured that endless choices are available.
Movie download sites do not promote on the basis of who has the best
movies, but on who has the most movies. Once a viewer has been lured in
by quantity, however, the attributes of quality do have an impact, not
only on sales, but on a creative's goal to be recognized for individual
brilliance.
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.
© Andrew Grossman
For reprints, contact:
licensing@andrewgrossman.net
616.551.2238
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