From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 00:42:17 MDT
>http://www.stephenking.com/sk1_073100.html
>
>More than 76% of the people who downloaded Stephen King's "The Plant Part I"
>actually paid for it.
Yeah, but look at the costs he cites:
How many downloads so far?
152,132
How many have paid?
116,200, or 76.38 per cent.
93,200 have paid up front with
credit cards, using
Amazon.com's service. 23,000
have promised to pay later, and
these payments are showing
up already (one guy sent me a
silver dollar). The pay-through
rate has been higher than I
dared hope.
Costs to you, as of Part 1?
$124,150 for print ads in
Publisher's Weekly and USA
Today, Load test for the Web
Servers, Project Managment
Fees, Server setup fees and
Compositor's fees to Mr.
Michael Alpert, who has done
his usual great job of making
the Philtrum product look
smart--ladies and gentlemen,
give him a hand. There's also
the cost of maintaining the
servers through which my story
is downloaded. Marsha may
have an idea of what these fees
amount to, but so far I don't.
Not added to these costs are
my services as writer and
Marsha's as all-around
whirling dervish.
A lot fewer downloads than
"Riding the Bullet."
Disappointed?
Not yet. You need to remember
that "Bullet" was a magnificent
one-shot, available from a lot
more sources and in many
cases given away for free. If
THE PLANT gets done, people
are going to be downloading
well into 2001, even with
longer segments on offer. If
those who have downloaded
Part 1 so far download the
following ten or eleven
installments, the total
downloads would be 1,673,452.
Do the math. It's pretty good
math, if people keep coming
back.
As Hal says, if. (But he won't need to pay that much in future advertising
blitzes on this.)
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:30:17 MST