Jessica Bell's Blog

The Alliterative Allomorph

Jessica Bell

Jessica Bell
Location
Athens, Attica, Greece
Birthday
December 31
Bio
Jessica Bell grew up in Melbourne, Australia, to two gothic rock musicians who had successful independent careers during the '80s and early '90s. She spent much of her childhood travelling to and from Australia to Europe, experiencing two entirely different worlds, yet feeling equally at home in both environments. She currently lives in Athens, Greece and works as a freelance writer/editor for Hellenic American Union, Cengage Learning, Pearson Education, Education First and Signature Manuscripts. Jessica Bell's poetry and short stories have been published in various anthologies and Literary Magazines. A full list can be found on her website. Additionally, she has written various English textbook materials and is also a singer/songwriter/guitarist. Ms. Bell's experience as an Australian living in Greece has greatly influenced her writing. Jessica Bell has a Bachelor of Arts from Latrobe University, where she studied subjects such as modern English literature, fiction writing, nonfiction writing, screenplay writing, editing and publishing children's literature, myth and ideology, and 18th-century romanticism.

MY RECENT POSTS

MY RECENT COMMENTS

Jessica Bell's Links

Salon.com
Editor’s Pick
MAY 22, 2012 7:12AM

Our writing is worth every penny you pay ... or ... is it in fact, worthless?

Rate: 5 Flag

With Amazon's free promo facility, there are so many readers that don't "buy" anymore. They just scan the free lists. I know this for a fact. I recently read it in an Amazon forum.

What is the future for us? Don't you think the value of our work is being degraded? Isn't this giving out a message that literature isn't worth paying for? I think it's only going to get worse.

I did a free promo for Twisted Velvet Chains at the beginning of the year. Initially I thought it was a good idea. Easy way to get exposure. But I also noticed, after doing the free promo, that it stopped selling. So was it a good idea after all? Will any of the 3000 that downloaded the book actually read it? Who knows ...

There's nothing wrong with giving away free work. In fact, I would advise that writers give away as many copies of their work as possible. But after a lot of thought, I think it's more beneficial to have control over who gets it for free. Give give give, but give wisely. Ultimately, I think the randomness of Amazon's free promo is going to destroy us. It's sending out the wrong message: Download me for free because I'm not really worth the money.

Can you imagine a supermarket opening an online shop which gives away Kellogg's cereal for free? No one would want to buy their cereal anymore would they? They'd just go and get it for free. Why spend money when you don't have to, right?

This is dangerous.

What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.

PS: Many thanks to Tricia and Elizabeth for highlighting Fabric on their blogs today!

Your tags:

TIP:

Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Recipient's email address:
Personal message (optional):

Your email address:
Cancel

Comments

Type your comment below:
Cancel
Jessica,an imροrtant issue toρic.You are right in what you say..but Kellogs some times to sell give a ρresent along with the ρroducts.(Instead of Kellogs any mark,it is just an examρle).I mean that there are other ways in Amazon to ρromote your job..Ρostcards,flyers,the read the first 25 ρages of the work and so many..I am lucking in details.The thing is at least what is troubling me more..if Self ρublishing deteriorizes the worth of the book.In my case I wrote a greek book.I sent it to as many greek ρublishing comρanies.No one ρublished it.And because I love this book I self ρublished.And my question is:Does my writing worth anything,since the major ρublishers refused to ρublish it;Ι am guessing readers make the book...But to reach to readers it must be ρublished..Not a lot of answering here..more questioning..but your work made me think..Rated!!
Stathi Stathi
May 22, 2012 07:41 AM
Big, big question, Jessica. I want to say yes and no, but that's a cop out. I think you're right that authors should control who gets free copies. Amazon's promo is designed to lure people in to buy something, be it more of a self-published author's work or a mainstream book or a Kindle for reading everything on.

But does being free devalue an author's work? Not always, especially when I think of literary magazines down the ages.

Free and easily distributed work isn't bad; what matters is who benefits most from increased traffic, and with Amazon's promo, I'd say that's Amazon. Which is dangerous. The biggest problem for me is that Amazon is now the main distribution conduit—for everything. (Rated)
Martha Nichols
May 22, 2012 01:46 PM
An interesting topic. We are livng in times when the biggest money is paid for the works which are doing most damage; I mean of course weapons.

Within the modern technology it seems that the best things you get free; I mean computer programs. Free operating systems such as GNU/freebsd or GNU/linux seem to be now even commercially more successful than commercial programs. You might know that Android the most used and most successful mobile operating system is based on linux, which you can get free.

I really don't know what to do with written texts. If you want to to do good and reliable work in the field of journalism for example, it is quite difficult to do it, if you wouldn't get anybody to pay to you.
Hannu Virtanen
May 22, 2012 02:33 PM
My first thought; is if a book is free, it is because it couldn't sell or it is just not any good. Wow! 3000 people downloaded it, that is impressive. I do wish you could have gotten paid for that, 3000 is too many. I feel giving it away devalues the book. You worked hard, couldn't you just have given a chapter to get buyers interested?Don't listen to me though, I just buy books, I don't write them. But I would love to one of these days. R
Lucinda Bliss
May 22, 2012 07:29 PM
I believe in artists getting paid for their work. When you are establishing yourself as an artist sometimes you do freebies, and after you are established you do benefits. There came a point in my mime career I stopped doing freebies for marketing because I had enough exposure in my market it wasn't needed. As wonderful as I thought I was and as joy I had with expressing myself, if no one had ever been willing to pay to see my performance I think I would have been exaggerating my greatness. I haven't been writing long enough to consider myself a professional writer. So far I have earned $5.00 from a "fan" who sent me a lovely letter. I write to become a better writer and I dream of being an author with a book that makes people think, laugh, and cry...and feel it is worth plunking down a few bucks to read.
Mimetalker
May 23, 2012 01:14 PM
In the field of journalism the situation is nowadays bad. Mainstream medias are full of systematic lies. Journalists are paid for misleading people and if you don't accept that it is not easy to find the place to publish your work and to find the way how to make your living.

Salon has been and still is one of the critical medias, which is publishing the work of critical journalists, who are trying to publish things, which he mainstream media is trying to hide or distort.
Hannu Virtanen
May 24, 2012 05:52 AM