Full Circle Associates

Just a link before I go...

Orcmid's Lair

"O'Reilly Radar > Buying the Cow, Though the Milk is Free. Tim O’Reilly links to an interesting article on The Book Standard about the success of authors and publishers that publish on-line versions. Some authors even use Creative Commons licenses to allow non-commercial derivatives, a move that some see as increasing the engagement of author and audience in ways that deepen the relationship. The experience of the cases discussed is that print sales are not impacted and may increase as the result of the wider publicity that the works enjoy, despite the degree of piracy that all forms of publishing experience.

Dennis goes on to write:

Tim’s article is inspiring, bringing to mind at one instant a number of observations:

* First, it reminds me of the contrast between people/organizations that cling to 100% of nothing rather than enjoy 10% of something really big.
* More than that, I see how much that trust is required to chance speculative lost sales in exchange for building of an audience. Sometimes I think the fearfulness of the entertainment and publishing media is a reflection of how fearful of exploitation (and danger) we have all become. (That’s without looking at the Zen of the entertainment media seeing thieves everywhere.)
* Bruce Schneier illustrates our state of fear in a recent note about the 11-year old Scout who was lost in the woods for 4 days and saw people but avoided contact with them because they were strangers. We are training ourselves to be afraid and distrustful.

Along with Tim’s observations, I also find the Robert Solomon and Fernando Flores Building Trust in Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life a welcome find for its attention to the notion of Authentic Trust (reviewed here and here). It’s time I stopped my random page-turnings and read this compact little book straight through.

And at the end of his post... the piece I loved best.

Last night I attended an Ottmar Liebert concert at a wonderful parkland venue. I purchased the autographed (415/2000) boxed-set of his latest album, La Semana, and also the solo album, Transit, by the Luna Negra bassist, Jon Gagan. I noticed this great announcement on the back cover of Transit:

Do the right thing!
If for any reason you need to make a copy of this CD,
we ask that you contribute $5 to the artist at
www.ssri.biz/donation/

Thanks.

In fact, you can donate for any of the publisher’s music and they’ll send you a link to the PDF for the cover that you can print for yourself.

Set it free. It comes back.

creative_commons