Have you heard the news?
Under the recently passed Equalization of Opportunity Bill for Literature, all reading material must now be offered only in digital content for FREE! We’ll save the trees, we’ll be a paperless nation, free to exchange every written word that has ever been or ever will be published at absolutely no cost to the reading public.
From now on, there will be no measurable value in what is produced by any writer, anywhere, in any language. Be it the most imaginative novel, or the most mundane text book, all will be equal as far as any monetary value is concerned. The internet will make authors of every age, in every corner of the world, no matter how little or how great their literary work, worth absolutely nothing.
Opponents of the bill have voiced concerns that this may be rather tough on writer's bank accounts, but as the sponsor of the bill stated, "only those whose motives are not moneymaking should be allowed to write."
So said Ayn Rand, more than 50 years ago in Atlas Shrugged and here we all are, looking at the reality of FREE ebooks, or a universal price of .99.
With the birth of digital reading devices came the immediate cry from the reading community. WE WANT FREE CONTENT! Of course people are more than willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an electronic reader, but it didn’t take them long to insist that the content be at a great discount, or no cost at all. It made sense. After all, why would anyone pay the same for a material product they could touch, feel, and carry, when the same product can be easily transmitted with practically no cost at all. The more the people cried “unfair”, the lower the prices for ebooks dropped, until not a single book was sold. They were all given away for free.
We can all remember the days long ago when bookstores began closing their doors. No one was willing to pay for what they could have for free. The New York Times thought they could put a subscription price on their on-line newspaper, and after their presses shut down forever. They soon realized that putting a price tag, even .99, was doomed to failure when there were so many free bloggers and a plethora of so-called journalists, who posted whatever they felt for the pure ego of seeing their name on a computer scene, and whose compensation was reading all those highly intelligent comments on how they’re lives would be so much better if they only found religion.
No one seemed to care that the majority of what was written for free was pretty terrible. No one seemed to care that none of these self-declared reporters had the time, or the money, to check facts, or correct their mistakes. No one noticed exactly when all the news vanished from the web sites because everyone was so busy reading about Charlie Sheen. For free.
And no one noticed, until it was too late, that authors began to pull their works from all the computer sites. It wasn’t only the entertainment writers who went on strike, it was every writer, everywhere, who began to disappear from sight. It didn’t matter if they wrote fiction or non-fiction. It didn’t matter if the genre was romance or mystery, or even, yes, even erotica. All the books were gone and all of the writers were gone with them. Those wonderful masters of the written word, gone forever for one reason and only one - their were told they were worth nothing.
While this may sound like some implausible draconian future, with the recent controversy over pricing of electronic books it’s really not that difficult to conceive this as a reality. What is the value of the written word? More importantly, does the writer have any real value in an age when just about anyone with a computer can be an instant “published” author? Anyone with a blog is now a journalist, anyone with a “smart” phone is now a reporter. And they’re all either giving it away for free, or receiving token compensation in the number of “hits” their site receives.
If all books are free, then all books have no value. If all books are priced at .99, then all books are valued equally, and all authors have exactly the same value, or none at all.
While I suppose there are authors who spend hours and hours writing for the sheer joy of the experience. I suppose there are authors who would rather see thousands of book sales at a price of .99, or thousands of their works being read at no cost at all, but there are a few who will refuse to comply with what the public demands, and they’ll simply vanish.
And the biggest nightmare of all is that no one will notice.
Who is John Galt?
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Christine McKellar
Bob Eckstein
King Kaufman
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments