Doh! The New Publishing Model

It dawned on me during a conversation with a co-conspirator the other day that the the new book publishing model is the old music publishing model.  Recall the old days when music was free on the radio, and you paid for albums and concerts.  So now with google books and youtube, you writing is free on googlebooks and your teaching is free on youtube, and people pay for your albums (books) and pay for your concerts (seminars).

Here is the deal...  by giving my courses away free on youtube.com, I get very wide distribution worldwide, nd the distribution focusses on those who want the info on the topic... so far some 33,000 uploads.  I get nothing from most of those people, but I can track about $5000 a year in revenue from those who do subsequently buy the book or take the seminar.

So it is like radio which was free to the listener, but the closer you got to the artist, the more you paid (album, concert.)  Now Paul McCartney gets 5 cents everytime they play Yesterday on the radio, but I also get a few cents everytime someone clicks through on an ad google throws up at viewers watching my videos, so the analogy continues.

Payola was a pay to play scandal in radio, which was unfair because radio waves were limited by law (not by physics, the fact we limit who gets to use what part of the radio spectrum is bad law, economics and physics) and youtube.com has a sort of payola, where you can pay to be the top listing in a search for say my topic, videos on small biz int'l trade.  But who cares, it is open and transparent, so it is fair.  But I also get my own channel, like having my own radio station, on youtube.com.

You have to think differently, or maybe just old school, to thrive in the new publishing industry.