With myself, physical copies of books something I’ve been avoiding, save for actual novels or something I could sit down and read on a nice day. Most if not all of the textbooks I’ve acquired over the past few years have been in pdf form and I’ve not paid a dime for them, not because I’d like to cheat the companies or feel a vandetta, but because the actual cost isn’t something I can stomach and the storage space for those books isn’t something I can spare.

It seems that too many people nowadays worry about making money and not about things that may be actually important, whats the fun in doing something if you aren’t enjoying the time you spend doing it?

The missing Step 2 is, of course, advertise and commercialize. It’s amazing how many are blind to this aspect. Those who fail at Step 2 grumble about those who are successful, either through unfair critique on the artistic quality (‘I could take a picture like that!’), or by creating a false relationship between increased art sales and decreased artistic value so as to preserve their own status of True Artist.

Only… who’s to say money for art is a bad thing? Video games, for instance, rack up huge budgets and that lets companies produce incredibly fine-tuned detailed Products which pass themselves off as Art. Is there a difference? If so, who would know and who would care? If I’m offered the choice between a slick MMO and a hobbyist freeware buggy MMO, I would likely pick WoW even though Blizzard is trying to make a profit and hobbyist-in-the-bedroom is not.

Or think of the doors money could open for someone writing a research book. “I had a $50,000 advance to write an in-depth expose on (famous celebrity)” vs “Here’s a Wiki article culled from various rumor-mill sources loosely cobbled together because our editor is donating their time to the project”. As Capitalism has taught us, money has great power to Get Things Done. Just because someone is not invested commercially does not automatically discount what they do. We would not have so many medicines to cure disease if companies didn’t realize they could turn a nice profit through R&D efforts.

In short, maybe with the destruction of art-as-product we’ll see a revitalization of art-as-art. But in 97% of cases, what I’m really after is art-as-product.

a) people will always want to support those they support. Give them something to do that with, and they’ll do it. It doesn’t matter how free you make your book or articles or art – they’ll find a way to support you. Just make it easy for them to do it.

b) that said, no piece of meaningful art has ever been created for the sole purpose of being sold, ever. In order to be worth buying, something has to have value, and “I’m making this so you’ll buy it” is not any sort of value. Sure, there’s Nickelbacks making “music” and Paris Hiltons writing books, but there’s nothing in those products that means anything. It’s just product, sold to the lowest common denominator (yes I went there. Nickelback is lowest common denominator, and if you like them… Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it from me, but you like shit music).

c) keep writing, man.

After that experience, I figure that I’m either writing for myself, or I’m flat-out nuts. I suppose a case could be made for both options there, really.