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Jul. 2nd, 2012 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
p_h_leeSo I'm almost out of eBooks to put up for direct download. (There's one left, for tomorrow, although it may not go up tomorrow because I will be extraordinarily busy.) Plus an extra day to highlight my games that are already free.
I've gotten a lot of positive response from this! A lot of nice reshares, kind statements about me and my games, some folks buying hardcopies or just sending me money. Those are all cool things.
I'm wondering right now if I should leave them up for a while (or forever), or whether I should take them down. Although this isn't a democracy (I'm not counting votes), I was wondering if I could get other folks' opinions on that.
Here are my concerns and constraints: I want to be able to provide the widest possible audience with access to my games. At the same time, I want them to be in the hands of people who will value and play them, and often I've seen free games dismissed or undervalued. And lastly, I'd like to be able to make some modest income on them.
If the games are available for free download, I'd like to be direct and honest about that, rather than (say) hosting torrents of them but not mentioning that on my site. That works great for some folks! But I don't think it's for me.
Does anyone have thoughts on the topic? "Free eBook download" vs. paid? Free culture vs. for-pay culture in general?
--
Public is fine! If I'm going to mope in public you can talk to me about it in public.
I should write a thing about what my experiments with various forms of "free" have been like. One of the things which is really stuck in my head is free is a gift. When I put something up for free, it's generally not part of a marketing strategy or because I don't want to deal with it or whatever. It's because I want to give you a gift.
You, collectively, you people who are interested in my games, have been really great to me. I want to give you a gift.
On the one hand, this is good for me, because framing it like this means starting personal connections and it means that I get a nice big kick of feel-good when people write to me about it. And boy, this most recent campaign has done a good job of that!
On the other hand, a gift isn't less emotionally fraught than a mercantile transaction. Gifts are, like, a part of yourself, offered up to another person. To hear that that makes it less valuable than a mercantile transaction is really hard. I tend to prioritize gifts over things I bought myself. I think I'm not alone in this, it's just the difference in parsing what a free download means.
( +William Hostman I hope you don't mind too bad that I'm using your post (you're not the only one who's said that to me!) as a way of looking at my feelings on this issue.)
It may be that "free" is too emotionally fraught for me to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised!
I've gotten a lot of positive response from this! A lot of nice reshares, kind statements about me and my games, some folks buying hardcopies or just sending me money. Those are all cool things.
I'm wondering right now if I should leave them up for a while (or forever), or whether I should take them down. Although this isn't a democracy (I'm not counting votes), I was wondering if I could get other folks' opinions on that.
Here are my concerns and constraints: I want to be able to provide the widest possible audience with access to my games. At the same time, I want them to be in the hands of people who will value and play them, and often I've seen free games dismissed or undervalued. And lastly, I'd like to be able to make some modest income on them.
If the games are available for free download, I'd like to be direct and honest about that, rather than (say) hosting torrents of them but not mentioning that on my site. That works great for some folks! But I don't think it's for me.
Does anyone have thoughts on the topic? "Free eBook download" vs. paid? Free culture vs. for-pay culture in general?
--
Public is fine! If I'm going to mope in public you can talk to me about it in public.
I should write a thing about what my experiments with various forms of "free" have been like. One of the things which is really stuck in my head is free is a gift. When I put something up for free, it's generally not part of a marketing strategy or because I don't want to deal with it or whatever. It's because I want to give you a gift.
You, collectively, you people who are interested in my games, have been really great to me. I want to give you a gift.
On the one hand, this is good for me, because framing it like this means starting personal connections and it means that I get a nice big kick of feel-good when people write to me about it. And boy, this most recent campaign has done a good job of that!
On the other hand, a gift isn't less emotionally fraught than a mercantile transaction. Gifts are, like, a part of yourself, offered up to another person. To hear that that makes it less valuable than a mercantile transaction is really hard. I tend to prioritize gifts over things I bought myself. I think I'm not alone in this, it's just the difference in parsing what a free download means.
( +William Hostman I hope you don't mind too bad that I'm using your post (you're not the only one who's said that to me!) as a way of looking at my feelings on this issue.)
It may be that "free" is too emotionally fraught for me to deal with. I wouldn't be surprised!
