Only 15 hours included per month in Spotify, then $16 for each extra 10 hours. It's a very expensive way to read. Audible is also expensive for one book a month, albeit, they also have a library of free inclusions, which is only good if you known what to look for.
This is, as someone now making the ill-advised move to writing, something I think about often. The problem is that most writing business models are broken. In classic publishing, you make a dollar off of each sale of a novel, so unless you're churning out several novels a year the numbers just don't add up. And maybe not even then. You basically have to not only be great, but win the lottery by being one of a handful of names that will sell 100,000 books a year.
I listened to a podcast on writing and marketing bestselling books. Aside from marketing when the podcaster should have been teaching, I think she missed the mark when trying to sell prospective authors on the dream of royalties. If you're 2x as good at marketing, you're still only buying 2 tickets to the lottery.
Really what needs to happen is that, if we value writing, we need a different business model for authors. Something like Patreon or a paid substack makes a lot more sense as a business model that can actually support writers. Unfortunately, that's competing with being able to buy a year or more of an author's blood, sweat, and tears for $8.99 on Kindle.
Dont' get me wrong, I think community will become ever more precious in our atomized society. Large subscriptions to library without the personal connection to authors and like-minded fans will still be around, but I think eventually most people will have 1-2 subscriptions to personal groups where they are active participants in a community, not just consumers of content. But I think there are a lot of growing pains between now and then.
I think, too, that we need to be wary of drawing the false dichotomy between passive consumption and active participation. Where I think I see the trend going is not so much in the move toward active participation, but instead toward active consumption. For instance, I know there are a lot of people who read every single Nooner, but they never like, comment, or reply. But the fact that these posts don't really appear in an infinity pool of passive consumption means that to read them requires more action than does a lot of other content consumption. I do think people are trending toward more and more conscientious choices about what they consume, even if they don't participate at all in the creation.
I don't think its a *false* dichotomy between passive consumption and active creation, I think its an *engineered* dichotomy.
Activity is on a spectrum, but all our solutions are geared towards the extremes: the most productive creators reaching the largest possible audience. This is optimized for selling the most ads, not building the healthiest community.
The healthiest community probably is a pyramid, where most people will consume and a disproportionate amount of what they consume comes from a relatively small number of exceptional individuals. For example, most stuff I consume, I consume without commenting. I comment on fewer items, and I actively help build the community in fewer, and I really only regular work on building one myself. However, the difference between a healthy creative pyramid and what we have has to do with a thriving *middle* that helps makes upward movement easier.
If you had a platform that supported more *active consumption* with better transparency and more control over what you consume, that would create a stepping stone to be more engaged in the communities that matter most to you (comments etc). The counter example to that, is for example, YouTube only showing me cable news videos for the presidential debate, instead of the commentary from shows I watch--even when I specifically search for phrases from the title of a channel I watch.
If you had commenting tools that encouraged functional and productivie discourse, that would facilitate the networking and collaborating with amateurs and peers at your level. If you tools that enabled peers to find each other (not just both be forcefed the most popular content) that would facilitate the transition from amateur / hobbyist to indie / small creator. And if you had the same collab and networking tools for indie creators and small businesses, more of those could become household names.
Instead you have the opposite. I regularly find it's difficult to find people in the niche between consumer and professional... not because they don't exist, but because all our spaces are designed to connect consumers with most successful professionals. It's hard to cut through the noise.
Only 15 hours included per month in Spotify, then $16 for each extra 10 hours. It's a very expensive way to read. Audible is also expensive for one book a month, albeit, they also have a library of free inclusions, which is only good if you known what to look for.
For the poors (including myself) I honestly just recommend Libby
I'd never heard of it. Sounds as though the functionality is glitchy, plus also only books from your own local library. Still, I'll give it a try.
This is, as someone now making the ill-advised move to writing, something I think about often. The problem is that most writing business models are broken. In classic publishing, you make a dollar off of each sale of a novel, so unless you're churning out several novels a year the numbers just don't add up. And maybe not even then. You basically have to not only be great, but win the lottery by being one of a handful of names that will sell 100,000 books a year.
I listened to a podcast on writing and marketing bestselling books. Aside from marketing when the podcaster should have been teaching, I think she missed the mark when trying to sell prospective authors on the dream of royalties. If you're 2x as good at marketing, you're still only buying 2 tickets to the lottery.
Really what needs to happen is that, if we value writing, we need a different business model for authors. Something like Patreon or a paid substack makes a lot more sense as a business model that can actually support writers. Unfortunately, that's competing with being able to buy a year or more of an author's blood, sweat, and tears for $8.99 on Kindle.
Dont' get me wrong, I think community will become ever more precious in our atomized society. Large subscriptions to library without the personal connection to authors and like-minded fans will still be around, but I think eventually most people will have 1-2 subscriptions to personal groups where they are active participants in a community, not just consumers of content. But I think there are a lot of growing pains between now and then.
I think, too, that we need to be wary of drawing the false dichotomy between passive consumption and active participation. Where I think I see the trend going is not so much in the move toward active participation, but instead toward active consumption. For instance, I know there are a lot of people who read every single Nooner, but they never like, comment, or reply. But the fact that these posts don't really appear in an infinity pool of passive consumption means that to read them requires more action than does a lot of other content consumption. I do think people are trending toward more and more conscientious choices about what they consume, even if they don't participate at all in the creation.
I don't think its a *false* dichotomy between passive consumption and active creation, I think its an *engineered* dichotomy.
Activity is on a spectrum, but all our solutions are geared towards the extremes: the most productive creators reaching the largest possible audience. This is optimized for selling the most ads, not building the healthiest community.
The healthiest community probably is a pyramid, where most people will consume and a disproportionate amount of what they consume comes from a relatively small number of exceptional individuals. For example, most stuff I consume, I consume without commenting. I comment on fewer items, and I actively help build the community in fewer, and I really only regular work on building one myself. However, the difference between a healthy creative pyramid and what we have has to do with a thriving *middle* that helps makes upward movement easier.
If you had a platform that supported more *active consumption* with better transparency and more control over what you consume, that would create a stepping stone to be more engaged in the communities that matter most to you (comments etc). The counter example to that, is for example, YouTube only showing me cable news videos for the presidential debate, instead of the commentary from shows I watch--even when I specifically search for phrases from the title of a channel I watch.
If you had commenting tools that encouraged functional and productivie discourse, that would facilitate the networking and collaborating with amateurs and peers at your level. If you tools that enabled peers to find each other (not just both be forcefed the most popular content) that would facilitate the transition from amateur / hobbyist to indie / small creator. And if you had the same collab and networking tools for indie creators and small businesses, more of those could become household names.
Instead you have the opposite. I regularly find it's difficult to find people in the niche between consumer and professional... not because they don't exist, but because all our spaces are designed to connect consumers with most successful professionals. It's hard to cut through the noise.
I didn’t know there were Audiobooks on Spotify! Way cool
Glad you took away what was most important from this post :)