What Publishing Can Learn From Music

As a writer, I follow discussions about e-books and digital distribution carefully. I want more people to read my book. Period. I'd like for people to pay me, so I can keep writing (or, at least, write faster, since currently my day job eats up 45-50 hours of my writing time each and every week), but it's the reading that's the thing.

I also was, and still am, a person that vehemently opposes DRM (basically, copy guard) on music. I begged and pleaded, along with tens of thousands of others, way back in the mid-90's, for the Sony's and BMI's and Virgin's of the world to grant users access to their master song files in digital format at a reasonable price (we suggested a quarter each). This was in the days when the only way to "share" music files was to search FTP directories in the (often vain) hope of finding a complete song, ripped at some horrendously low bitrate. The recording industry, knowing that "sharing" was beyind the technical capabilities of 99.99% of music consumers, basically laughed and mocked us and more or less dared us to scale the walls of their ivory towers.

Then came Napster, and, well... you know the rest. Who's laughing now?

Why am I telling you this? Because if you're a writer OR someone interested in intellectual property distribution via electronic channels, then I suggest reading this interesting article over on HufPo, titled "What Publishing Can Learn From Music". Good stuff, filled with many chewy links.

Enjoy!

PS - Did I mention that my first novel, Blood Magic, is available in eBook format at Fictionwise.com? if you'd like to see Blood Magic or Nights of Sin on Amazon's Kindle, be sure to click on the links below and look for the "Request This Book On Kindle" links just below the main cover photo!

Blood Magic

Nights of Sin

Thanks!