Something that bugs me: a really nice idea about the market is that it should ideally align maximizing a selfish good (the entrepreneur's and company's self-interest) with overall social welfare. But for books, the "best" thing to do for social welfare is to give them away online
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @Austen and
michael_nielsen Retweeted michael_nielsen
This sometimes works out well - I was very lucky giving one of my books away for free online ( https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1031256363458916352 … ). But that involved (a) a lot of luck; and (b) was very field-specific. I wish there was a general model for aligning these interests.
michael_nielsen added,
michael_nielsen @michael_nielsenOpen access is often argued about in the abstract. I want to talk about a specific case study where I have detailed data - usage patterns for my (open access) online book/monograph "Neural Networks and Deep Learning" http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.htmlShow this thread2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes -
Bring back patronage?
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I'd love to hear how you think it might work! Historically, patronage has done some amazing things, but has very limited scaling capabilities. Arguably, the biggest success has been universities. Which, er, as you know have some shortcomings
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Replying to @michael_nielsen @Austen and
It's common to point to Patreon and Kickstarter. But the blunt fact is that the number of very high quality creative projects these have supported at a reasonable income is tiny. It's great for those people, but (so far) hasn't provided a scalable model.
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Ya I don’t think either of those models work here. Maybe there isn’t one that does, not sure. But I think the solution is selling 1,000 of something for $100 ea
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Replying to @Austen @michael_nielsen and
I think there's great potential for self-published books with mainstream appeal to be launched via interviews on established podcasts or even independent pod mini-series. IMO, we need to bring back the "wealthy benefactor" for niche writers to free them from academia
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Replying to @webdevMason @Austen and
But also: what you want to be paying for is not *a book,* but for a smart person in the grip of obsession to make themselves into a world-class resource. The book is *an* output, maybe not *the* output. Book sales are a terrible funding model
3 replies 3 retweets 29 likes -
Replying to @webdevMason @Austen and
I think this is de facto how a lot of public intellectuals work. Michael Lewis is a highly paid motivational speaker who occasionally publishes a book as a marketing exercise, etc etc. (Without looking it up I assume he’s $50k+ an event.)
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A lot of trade nonfiction publishing is subsidized by universities. It's common for faculty to write trade books on work time.
6:44 PM - 10 Jun 2019
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