Sam Harris has a blog post today outlining very lucidly the problems facing writers and publishers in the online age. He solicits ideas for a fix. Here’s one based on equal parts intuition and experience.
Like Harris, I probably wouldn’t pay much (or anything) for a book if I knew I could get, for free, a shorter essay or TED talk that contained most of the same information. As a matter of fact I still haven’t bought “The Moral Landscape,” because I saw the book talk in real life and feel like I got the idea. The talk was free, but here’s the thing: I might have been willing to pay.
Now: Would I pay anything to attend a live ONLINE lecture? You know, I just might. Especially if the video stream were accessorized with live, and I hope at least somewhat interesting tweets from other audience members, if I could submit questions for possible address by the speaker, if the video quality and presentation were good. Add some “PopUp Video” style annotations, perhaps pre-scripted for accuracy and convenience, and there might just be enough value added there to make it worth paying for.
Any takers?
