Publishers have the same problem musicians do: it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music), (b) you're literally competing with every other publisher/musician in the entire world. There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe...
> There's a larger consumer pie, but a ridiculously larger producer pie
No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet, period. This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co. Whether there is competition or not it doesn't matter.
> it's (a) ridiculously easy to publish now (text or music),
producing =/= publishing
A published crap will still be crap. Producing something good takes effort and it's valid for all digital goods including the press. And since nobody's willing to pay for that work, more and more crap get published,which makes people want to buy less and less.
> No it's just that people don't want to pay for stuff on the internet, period. This is valid for all digital goods, music,books,movies,news and co. Whether there is competition or not it doesn't matter.
Hence why iTunes was a failure, let alone Netflix? Make it easy and the customers will come. (I was actually surprised that iTunes worked, and people were willing to pay as long as it was sufficiently convenient.) Just not enough for the massively greater creator pool, as talentless bozos like me can put music out there too.
Exactly. I spend way more on digital media than I did ten years ago. Games on GOG especially, some on steam (if there's no DRM-free version), digital music downloads from bandcamp, direct from artists and in some cases through resellers.
There's nothing about being on the internet that makes people not want to spend money. Some people are just cheapskates and will never buy your stuff and some people don't have economic resources to do so (for example students, etc). Chasing these people will just eat up your time. Focus on the paying customers.
