New publishing model

[from collision detection] I'm mighty impressed by this:

Sci-fi author and blogger extraordinaire Cory Doctorow has for two years been experimenting with an intriguing publishing model: Every time he writes a novel, he sells the print edition at normal bookstore prices, but also freely gives away an electronic copy of the text online. His believes -- and I agree -- that an author's worst fear is not piracy but irrelevance: He'd rather have more people reading it than not. As it turns out, his strategy worked: The free giveaway created buzz and word-of-mouth, and his books have sold far more than his publishers originally expected.

What's particularly neat is that Doctorow is now releasing his books with licenses that allow people to make "derivative works" -- to remix, edit, or re-present the book in an entirely original format. Again, traditional publishers thought he was insane, and again they were wrong. Designers and webheads created all manner of cool byproducts that created yet even more buzz, and his sales went even higher. By allowing people to muck with his work, he effectively benefits from hundreds of hours of free labor of supercreative folks around the world.

The coolest remix of all? Second Life, the online virtual world, held a contest to see which of their player/citizens could design the coolest in-game version of Cory's latest book

This is a variant of honour system/tipping-jar systems that some online writers and websites have used in the past. Except that there is no tipping-jar in this case.

But then that is an oversimplification and misses a subtle point.

Whereas tipping-jar systems are exactly like their offline equivalents (buskers with a hat on the ground in front of them) in that the tip is a means of subsistence, Cory Doctorow's model is geared towards self-promotion. In that respect, the online version of his books is not the "product" -- it is "marketing collateral".

But even more, I love this man's model for "extended" self-promotion: how obvious and yet what genius to open his creations for others to make derivative works!

I will relate this story with great relish in future each time I hear someone doubting open source and/or the power of communities as legitimate models for making money outside the Internet world.

Link: collision detection: A virtual author.