The Mesh web conference kicks off in Toronto on Wednesday and yours truly will be taking part in a panel discussion titled “How Adult Entertainment is Reshaping the Internet – and vice versa.” The discussion will be moderated by Mark Evans, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with both at The Globe and Mail and the National Post, while fellow panelists will be Patchen Barss and Allison Vivas. I’ve talked about Patchen and his book The Erotic Engine before while Allison is president of Pink Visual, an adult entertainment company I’ve grown quite fond of (I’ve never actually seen any of their content, but I like the people who run the company).
It’s funny because I’ve been thinking lately about the changes that the profession of writing is currently undergoing. From journalism to book writing, things are very much in a state of flux thanks to the internet. The old ways of making money are rapidly disappearing, while the new ways - if there ever will be such a thing - are not yet completely apparent. In that way, the businesses of writing and pornography are not all that different.
I’ve jokingly compared journalists and porn stars before - we both deal in inches and we both screw people for money - but there is actually a serious side to it. As the media industry-watching folks at Poynter have suggested, both industries are currently plagued by the notion of “free” - people have become accustomed to getting both their news and their porn for free, which is really messing with the economics of how to supply either.
I documented the porn industry’s problems in a lengthy piece for AskMen.com earlier this year. In the writing business, this is having some really bizarre effects - some of which I’ve directly experienced in the six months since going freelance. Generally speaking, the news outlets with the biggest audiences and largest reach tend to pay the worst. Indeed, the Huffington Post - one of the biggest news sites around - has achieved some notoriety for achieving its status on the backs of bloggers who worked for free, some of whom are angry that the site was sold to AOL for hundreds of millions. Print publications, meanwhile, tend to pay better even though their readership isn’t at the same level as these larger sites. That seems pretty skewed, although it’s probably still reflective of the fact that while advertising is migrating to online, a good chunk of it still resides in print.
In light of that weird fact, I’ve started to wonder about whether writing isn’t where writers are ultimately going to make their money. Regardless of whether they’re suing the Huffington Post or not, a good many people wrote for - and continue to write for - that site and others like it for little or no pay. They do it for other reasons; some like writing for fun while others like the exposure that such a giant site gets them. In that vein, writing is almost a form of advertising for the individual that - hopefully - leads to income coming from other sources.
Over the past few months, I’ve been invited to take part in some workshops and speaking engagements, all of which have called on my expertise - real or alleged - on certain subjects. Some of them were paying gigs that actually paid better than a lot of the writing jobs I’ve taken. And indeed - by earning income from these sources, I’m freed up to write more of what I want, which means I can take on jobs that pay less, if anything. Most importantly, I’m freed up to embark on entrepreneurial writing, which is sort of how I describe writing books these days.
I’ve blogged before about the revolution the book business is going through and it seems to me the changes there are a little clearer to predict than in the journalism world. Under the old system, authors would get paid in advance of writing a book, which supported their effort. Under the emergent self-publishing system, that dichotomy is flipped - authors earn their money after they write the book. It’s clearly a higher risk, but it holds the promise of a much better payout, as a piece in the New York Times recently spelled out.
Book writing is necessarily becoming more entrepreneurial, which is both good and bad. Ultimately, writers are earning far more freedoms and opportunities, but the downside is they’re having to become more than just writers. Some may hate that, but I quite like it.
Perhaps the answers for the porn business are similar. Here’s a crazy suggestion: what if porn stars were to accept that the sex they have on video is done for free, with their income coming from other places? For example, let’s say a gal starts her own site where she posts videos of herself having sex for free. It’s not hard to imagine that such a site would become successful, making the proprietor a star pretty quickly. The gal could then use her fame to book herself into well-paid appearances at strip clubs across the land. In other words, she’d be a highly paid stripper - the porn is just the advertising vehicle. It’s the “freemium” idea taken to its extreme.
The effects of such a scenario would be similar to the book business: the entrepreneur (porn star/author) would keep most of their earned income while the distributor (porn company/publisher) would be cut out of the equation. I know a lot of authors like the idea. I wonder what porn stars might think?
If you’re in San Francisco this weekend, here’s something for you: the Arse Elektronika conference on sex, technology, culture and class.
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