Essay--and Now a Word From Our Sponsor

Recently on The Dead Robots’ Society, the podcast talkshow I cohost with fellow author Terry Mixon, John Mierau, a long time author and content creator friend of mine, and I discussed the problems with content ownership, fiduciary issues with the various players, and the fact that when the next disruption comes, we need to be prepared. John is, strangely enough, the one who recruited for me Patreon, convinced me to give it a try. I’m glad he did. However, John doesn’t think Patreon is long for this world. Not anymore.

Here’s the thing. If you’re in business, presumably you want to make some money and certain business models allow for price gouging. Hell, if you think Amazon and Wal-Mart don’t manufacture a TON of price pressure on their supposed partners, you got another think coming. Bottom line is that for more than a decade, the gorillas out there have been doing everything to make the consumers happy and fuck over their content providers and product manufacturers. That model can’t hold for forever.

I follow a lot of folks on YouTube and Twitch. I know how precarious their financial situations are. It can take hours and hours of work just to create a single 15-30 minute video. Streamers? The successful ones seem to stream in 4-8 hour blocks. Ugh.

Bottom line is that these folks work damned hard. How many clicks on ads does it take to make up for that time? Well, guess what? Unless you happen to be at the top, it’s incredibly difficult to make money now.

Twitch allows folks to subscribe to a streamer, award points to streamers (which add up to real money), donate, and all sorts of other crazy. YT has some of the same things now, but you have to be a partner and have to have a lot of views. DRS and Shadowpublications will more than likely NEVER qualify for ad revenue. I’m just fine with that.

Speaking of ad revenue, that is a business that is just fucking dying and there’s a lot of reasons for it. Chiefly, I think we’re all just sick of the model. Think about how often you use your adblocker. Think about how often a site begs you to turn it off and tells you how they need to make money to keep doing what they’re doing? How often do you “skip the ad?”

We, the consumers, are now spending our time (and sometimes money) finding ways to get around these revenue schemes from which the creators make a ridiculous pittance. But what’s the alternative?

Twitch made an interesting inroad with Amazon. Basically, if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can “subscribe” to a Twitch Streamer for a month. For free. That gives the streamer a monthly income for what they do (it’s still small, don’t get me wrong), and you, the consumer, get access to all sorts of bennies for subscribing to a streamer. If you’re using Amazon Prime and you’re not supporting a twitch streamer every month, you’re wasting an opportunity to support a creator. It costs you nothing because you already paid for it with your prime subscription.

While I’m rightfully leery of any partnership with Amazon, both Twitch and the ‘zon made a good deal there and it’s helping a lot of streamers. But still, the majority of their money comes from outside the “free” amazon prime subscriptions and relies on tips from audience members (called bits), as well as donations. The Twitch ecosystem is pretty damned good as far as compensating its streamers. Maybe it’s because, unlike Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or most of the other large companies, they realize that if the streamers don’t make money, there’s no streamers. Without streamers, there’s no audience. Without an audience… I think you get the idea.

Amazon has many of us in a stranglehold. Their platform is the largest, their revenue (for the moment) is sky-high, and they can afford to do some interesting things. Those interesting things included the KDP program which allows readers to read everything in the program for a fee. For each “page” of a book you read, the author gets credited for it. Per page, it ain’t much. But it can add up to ridiculous sums of money as several of my colleagues can attest.

But there’s a catch. For a book to be in the program, it must be EXCLUSIVE. It can’t live on any other platform. It can’t be sold from any other platform. You can’t even sell it from your site. And you have to commit to a couple of months before you can take it back out of the program. Violate those rules and the mighty ‘Zon could decide to blacklist you from their ecosystem. Permanently. So, um, it’s got some pretty serious teeth.

Now. What’s a page read worth? NOBODY FUCKING KNOWS. This is because Amazon uses a “fund” to figure out what a page read is worth. So if I get a thousand page reads one month, the money I make from that could conceivably change drastically the next month. Oh, and that “fund?” Yeah, it keeps changing too.

If you’re not involved in Amazon’s protection racket, you suffer unless you’re with one of the big publishers. Indies and small presses are the most vulnerable. Why? Because Amazon’s algorithms are private, seem to constantly be in flux, and we’ll never fucking know why. If you’re not exclusive and not one of the big folks, they could very easily unhook you from the top search results or whatever else. Do they? I have no clue.

A lot of folks were making a lot of money writing erotica and selling it via KDP on Amazon. Amazon, without warning, shut that down completely and a lot of folks that were making money writing those tales suddenly found themselves without an income because Amazon was their largest distributor and still IS the largest distributor of ebooks.

Amazon can change the rules on anything anytime they want. They don’t have to give a heads up. They don’t have to ponder it or open it up to public comment. There’s no ombudsmen that’s going to fight for you. No one at the top gives a shit. You’re just a scribbler and you’re lucky to have a venue where someone pays for your pathetic work. Oops, sorry. That was my inner demon speaking.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, they all have the ability, and the right, to completely destroy profit making endeavors that make use of their platform. They can decide one day to ban all profanity in all written works. They could decide that you’re making too much money and they’re not and suddenly that awesome percentage you were making gets a little smaller. And a little more. And a little more.

What’s the alternative? This is the internet and it’s a goddamned big place. I don’t know how many audiobooks and ebooks are out there, but it’s gotta be a staggering number with everything from the ridiculously poor to the sublimely excellent. How are you, the reader, the listener, the consumer or patron, supposed to find what you’re looking for in a ridiculously cluttered ocean? Good question.

I’ve been spending some time with a few other creators and we’re trying a few things. Prepping, you might say, for a new ecosystem. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, I don’t want to give away any of my half-formed, ill-informed ideas. Mental masturbation is fun, but that’s an entirely different conversation.

The reality is that I HAVE to be on Amazon. I have to be on YouTube. I have to be on Facebook, Twitter, instagram (which I don’t at all use, unfortunately), and I have to be on whatever catches fire next. But I have to be honest here, I’d rather contract my social media presence than spread it. I’d rather have folks visit my website to look at my discussion of an article or something like that. And no, not because of ad revenue.

I’ve been asked over and over again why Shadowpublications and The Dead Robots’ Society don’t run ads. It’s simple. They’re icky. And what do I mean by that? Lack of control. Say I’m currently using Amazon for something (like, most of my writing income) and I’m suddenly unhappy with them. Like they changed their terms again or that KDP fund magically dwindled to nothing, or maybe they decide I have too many curse words in my books and move me to the “adult only” section, how can I badmouth them? If I’m advertising their services on my podcast and getting paid, not once, but twice by the bastards, how can I bitch about them?

Not that I can, but if I was eligible to include advertisements on my YouTube channel, I can’t guarantee that what’s being advertised is something I’m okay with. If you haven’t seen the fucking doomsday NRA commercials, go find one. I don’t want that shit NEAR my content. I don’t want to support ass clowns of any stripe that I don’t want to support. Intentionally or unintentionally.

Yes, I’m an idiot for dismissing potentially lucrative revenue streams (although given the size of my audience, “lucrative” is a relative term), but I’m doing my best to live by my ideals. If I don’t like a game, if I know it’s rigged, I just walk away and find another game to play. That attitude is probably why I’m going to end up being homeless if I make it to 70.

The other problem with advertising? It interrupts content. It destroys the flow. For most fluid content, as in spoken word or performances, finding a spot to splice in a commercial that doesn’t completely annihilate the verisimilitude is damned difficult. Again, it’s why most of us use adblockers.

So what’s the answer? For each author to have their own “Patreon” like service? Well, that’s not tenable in the long run either. Why?

Let’s look at streaming services. The ability to unhook from the cable tv monstrosity, where you’re charged up to $200 a month for a cornucopia of content, most of which you don’t ever view, was supposed to enable the consumer access to real a la carte services. While transitioning to streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, whatever Disney is calling their crap, or any of the other dozens of services out there, is extremely easy and usually worth far much more than the typical cable offerings, it’s expensive to purchase a year’s content from multiple streaming services.

Want Netflix? Want Hulu? Want ‘Zon’s Prime? How about Disney? Or CBS? Or… The list goes on. Each of these is going to cost you easily upwards of $12 a month. Add it all together and you start getting dangerously close to what you already pay for cable. Granted, you have a better selection of content, but not necessarily a better quality of content. Usually it’s the same thing—you end up paying for far more than you use.

Now imagine hundreds or hundreds of thousands of these streaming services run by the content creators themselves. If you want to support ten or twelve authors, musicians, video creators, or that strange dancing penguin from one of my more medicated dreams, it can add up damned fast. Even at $1 a month for each creator, you could end up in the same mess with all the streaming services and for essentially less content.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of the patron model. Always have been. Maybe that’s because I AM a content creator and I know the challenges in trying to budget for slippages in income due to reader fluctuation, the lack of marketing because a publisher can’t be bothered to do their job, ahem, or, Garaaga help us, an illness that keeps me from doing what I do.

The patron model is one I still firmly believe in. Perhaps one day a group of authors will come together and offer their wares in a single clearing house that is far removed from the corporate owned entities. The cynic in me, of course, insists it will just turn into the same greed-ridden mess, but I’m hopeful. Or maybe naive.

For now, let’s just agree that the situation is pretty fucked up. More and more authors are trying to supplement their income by offering non-exclusive work from their stores. In other words, books, audiobooks, and etc that are not exclusive to Amazon or Audible (same company folks). The rule of thumb should be: purchase from the creator themselves if at all possible.

It can be a pain in the ass, sure. There may be an extra hoop to jump through because it’s not coming through an app that is exclusively tied to an Amazon, an iTunes, a Google Play, or what have you, but the creators get more money. With more money comes more content.

The Derelict Saga audiobooks, for instance, are non-exclusive. I made that decision because I wanted to try something different. I paid for it in lack of sales. Oh, boy, have I paid for it.

The truth is that if you don’t go exclusive, Audible won’t help you market. If you don’t go exclusive with Amazon, they won’t do jackshit to help you with anything. Unless you have the money, of course, to purchase ads and etc to raise your visibility. If you’re exclusive, however, they tend to at least make an attempt. Again, the rule of thumb is: if you’re not exclusive and you’re not with a big publishing company or have the cash to do the marketing, you’ve got a hell of a hill to climb.

Yet you know what? I have no regrets about that. None at all. It is what it is, but the fact I have control is worth something. The fact the series has cultivated a dedicated following (you should see all the emails I get about what a lazy bastard I am for having not already finished writing the series) is an achievement relatively few authors ever have. I know I’m fortunate to have made as many sales as I have. Most writers don’t achieve the success I’ve already had and guess what—I can’t pay my bills writing full time. That should tell you something.

The market is always in flux and I feel as though the next “adjustment” is around the corner. What will disrupt Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and the rest of the mess out there? I’ve no clue. I just know it’s coming. Will I be prepared? Probably not, but I’m doing my best.

Just remember—free content isn’t free. It may be free for you to enjoy, but it’s certainly not free to create. It takes time. It takes money to purchase and replace malfunctioning equipment. There are hosting costs the creators have to pay, internet access fees, electricity, and all the other bullshit that every business in the world finds themselves trying to pay for. The difference? A content creator’s business address is usually their own home.

I sit through the ads for the YouTubers I support. The same for the streamers. I kill the adblocker, mute the sound for the commercial, and unmute it when the content I want to watch returns. Ads are annoying, but it’s the “cheapest” way to support the creator apart from donating a few bucks a month to them, or purchasing t-shirts or books or whatever from their associated networks. Which, if I had the money, I would.

Speaking of YouTubers, I’m seeing more and more complaints that YouTube is now demonetizing videos for games with profanity and violence. Or if the gamers themselves get a little too frisky with the f-bomb. No announcement. No warning. No fucking nothing.

Once technology could turn any closet into a recording studio, any writer into a publisher, and any musician could produce entire albums, the number of creative works in the world exploded. If a creator found a following, they could monetize it and afford to produce more content, the quality hopefully rising along the way. Sometimes that monetization provides enough cash to pay for their internet and replace or upgrade equipment. Sometimes it ends up becoming a significant portion of their income.

If the monetization models break down, creators have to find new ones, or adjust their content to match whatever new rules the gatekeepers decide to impose. If the current distribution models break down, creators have to find new ones.

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