Editor
ASJA Newsletter
To the Editor:
Agent Ethan Ellenberg appears
to believe that Web content grows on trees. How
else to explain his expressed fear ("Internet
May Threaten Nonfiction Authors' Incomes,"
ASJA Newsletter, October 2000, p. C5) that
Web surfers' abilities to read articles online
free of charge will make it "harder and harder
[for nonfiction authors] to land book and other
deals that have good income potential."
The Web hardly represents
the first publishing experiment in content giveaway.
The Fed for decades has offered informative pamphlets
and even books on countless subjects, free. Manufacturers
of all kinds have long given away informational
how-to pamphlets and books -- e.g., for do-it-yourself
carpenters. Thousands of periodicals here in the
U.S. come free for the taking. Every town and
small city has its "pennysaver" newspapers
with content on neighborhood issues. Most cities
medium-sized and up have more serious and substantial
free "alternative" weeklies, bi-weeklies,
and monthlies: here in New York, for example,
both the New York Press and the Village Voice
now come free, as do specialized tabloids devoted
to music, to art, to computer matters, and to
other subjects. Airline, hotel, and other in-house
periodicals cost the reader nothing. Specialists
in just about any field can subscribe to numerous
free industry-backed or advertising-supported
publications actually mailed to them at no cost
-- in my case, for example, Micro-Publishing News,
Digital Imaging, and quite a few more.
No one, to my knowledge,
has ever proposed that this situation imperils
writers -- though, to follow Ellenberg's logic,
the availability of all this free information
competes with sales of books and magazines on
the same subjects that charge a purchase price,
and thus jeopardizes writers' making a living.
Perhaps because he's obviously not a writer himself,
Ellenberg misses the point: The content for all
those print publications given away gratis comes
from . . . writers! And while some of them no
doubt are staffers, others are freelancers to
whom the writing assignments have been outsourced
by the publishers. Presumably, those freelancers
negotiated agreements that involved payment for
their services. (I know I did, when I've written
for such periodicals.) In other words, those print
venues constitute not just outlets but markets
for writers. The same is true of content-oriented
websites, assignments from which in fact represent
"deals that have good income potential."
The underlying assumption
of Ellenberg's unfounded "opinion" is
that any nonfiction writing on a subject that
readers can obtain free of charge undercuts and
eventually drives out the marketing of writing
for publications for which readers have to pay.
Fact is, though, that the history of free vs.
purchased printed matter in the U.S. does not
substantiate that notion; to the contrary. With
the giveaway of printed books and magazines stretching
back half a century, and the Internet now several
decades old, and the Web in its sixth year, we
have more books and magazines published in this
country than ever before. And the experience of
myself and all my writer colleagues is that our
"product" is now more in demand than
it was previously. To cite my own case: in the
1990s, working a very small niche specialty, I've
published over 600 essays and 6 books, have contracts
for more, and actually get as much paying work
as I can handle comfortably -- at the highest
rates I've ever commanded. (Most of it, by the
way, has come from print publications, but I've
undertaken some assignments from webzines, and
also have begun to license Web publication rights
to material that first appeared in print.)
There's absolutely no reason
to assume that the Internet will reduce authors'
opportunities or incomes. Not surprisingly, Ellenberg
can provide no substantiation for his hypothesis;
he begins by admitting that he does "not
have a lot of hard data to back up" his prognosis,
and concludes by confessing that "I cannot
point to a single sales statistic that bears out
my views." I find it hard to take such an
opinion seriously, and cannot imagine why it occupied
a page of our newsletter. Surely there's better
use for this space than groundless speculation
from the inexpert.
/s/ A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
This letter appeared in
print under the title "Letters: ???"
in the ASJA Newsletter, Vol. ??, no. 6
(June 2000), pp. C3, C7 This publication is the
newsletter of the American Society of Journalists
and Authors.
