I just came across this intriguing article in The Atlantic via the singer John Owen-Jones’s Twitter feed (how’s that for a tenuous connection?): How You Turn Music Into Money in 2012 (Spoiler: Mostly iTunes).
As fellow creative types, it behooves writers to pay attention to how artists and musicians are monetizing their careers online. Although the industries and distributions are different, take a gander at how avant garde musician Zoe Keating sees her six-month income rolling in.
My takeaways: distribution diversity is good, assumptions are dangerous, and the digital landscape if far from being predictable or settled. None of that is a surprise, but it’s good to see concrete numbers to back up some of my thinking.
What did you get out of the article?
Well diversity seems to be the thing, but for that to help you also need to be reasonably settled with more than one product available. The digital landscape requires or allows us to be constantly aware of trends and at least we enjoy the luxury to then to act quickly, if required. I’d say that iTunes is for music what Amazon is for ebooks and therefore you can use Zoe’s logic. I’m in KDP Select for the moment and will stay there for a little while longer even though I believe diversity is good. I cant tell you absolutely what I am going to do. Right now I’m working on the next book. I might start to diversify After July, who knows? The thing is, what works for one person might not work for another.