I regularly hear wild arguments that all art should be free. It's obviously consumers talking here. Easy for them to say! How's that supposed to work, exactly? Who is going to write books 20 years from now if there's no way to make money doing so?
Aside from being purely selfish, some of this comes from common delusions about how writing (or other arts) actually work, from a business standpoint. Maybe they think all writers are greedy bastards who make millions of dollars by overcharging for their work. Then I'd agree that some things could change. The few successful artists get all the media coverage, painting a completely reversed image of what it's really like. The vast majority of artists are struggling to make ends meet, just hoping to be seen among the glut of products cranked out every day. And if they succeed in getting a book deal or distribution deal, they end up getting just a small percentage, while publishers set the prices and control everything.
If anything, it would be fair to ask that creators get a bigger cut of the money earned by their work, and all the middlemen settle for less ... but I know that's unrealistic, because it's an industry, many roles interlocked into a beast that just barely functions.
If all art was free, then an appalling gloom would set in. We'd never get away from our crap jobs. We'll never be able to do what we love to do full time. We'll always be somebody's slaves. There will be no hope of success anymore.
But I suspect these rabid consumers wouldn't care. There's plenty of stuff already written. Why bother creating any more? You may think that "anyone can do it", but you'd be surprised ... anyone can make a half-assed attempt at creating art. But is that what we should set our sights on?
Artists should be free to do their best, and consumers are free to choose what they will or will not buy. But this arrogant grabby attitude of people wanting work handed to them for free ... no. Maybe they should work a few weeks at their regular jobs without a paycheck and see what that's like. Maybe their jobs are the ones with no value in the end.
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2 comments:
Here here...well said, but I have to ask, what prompted this?
Hi J,
It wasn't just one thing. I was looking for new markets for writing, and finding mostly non-paying websites instead. But that's okay - they can set whatever rules they want.
But it was a comment made over dinner along the lines of "Why bother -- it's not like your stuff will be worth squat in a few years."
People really feel that way, as if they're "entitled" to have whatever they want. That's scary, and worth a little exposee.
= scott
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