Selling Creativity (in 140 char pieces)

On twitter tonight (@PickletReader) I attempted to articulate the Picklets digital distribution philosophy;

• Picklets app has two primary purposes 1) show readable content 2) enable reader to compensate author for their work
• (if something can be said to have two primary purposes)
• Call it ‘purchasing content’ if you must. The idea behind it is ‘support future work in the same vein’.
• Readers don’t ‘purchase content’ up front; they download content, read it, then, if they want to, support the author’s future output.
• There’s no ‘picklet store’; just a variety of channels. No ‘piracy’ of picklet content possible because any distribution is legitimate.
• “The people who don’t want to compensate you for your efforts ARE NOT YOUR ACTUAL AUDIENCE” http://bit.ly/fAA1Ij
• The reader commits to financially supporting the author as a response to the experience of the work, not in anticipation of it.
• The Picklets app provides a low-friction mechanism for a reader to compensate an author for their work if they want to.
• It would be delusional in 2010 to found a digital publishing business based on the fiction of controlling distribution. Let’s not.

interjection from @nakedfella requesting clarification;

@PickletReader Does that mean you accept that piracy will happen?

• @nakedfella yes but no. I’m defining ‘piracy’ out of existence. All distribution of picklets is good distribution.
• Now that we can’t control distribution, we don’t sell digital artifacts, but explictly support the specific artists’ creative practice.
• The relationship between the author, the content and the reader must be stated explicitly at the point of consumption.
• The mechanism for the reader to compensate the author is frictionless and presented at the moment of the reader’s peak engagement.
• The mechanism (or link) for compensating the author of a work is built-in to the work itself; always distributed with it.

So. What it boils down to for the implementation of next release of the Picklets app;

• ‘free’ download of any picklet from the catalogue
• in-app purchase from ‘about the author’ page at the end of each picklet
• add support for sharing picklet archive files (drag .picklet file out of iTunes to email to a friend, upload to file sharing, torrent, whatever)
• add support for reading shared picklet files (drag .picklet file into iTunes)

Scary, isn’t it?