The Web and Identity Goods
<p>InstaPundit <a href='http://www.instapundit.com/archives/013407.php'>writes</a>:<br />
<em>This seems to me to suggest that free downloads don&#8217;t do much to<br />
cannibalize actual [book] sales.</em></p>
<p>I have more (or at least longer-term) experience with this than<br />
anyone else.  Back in 1991, <cite>The New Hacker&#8217;s Dictionary</cite><br />
was the very first real book (like, with an ISBN) to be released<br />
simultaneously in print and available for free download on-line. Both<br />
of the books I&#8217;ve done since, <cite>The Cathedral and the<br />
Bazaar</cite> and <cite>The Art of Unix Programming</cite>, have also<br />
been released for free download at the same time they were in print.<br />
You can easily find all three on <a href='http://www.catb.org/~esr/'>my<br />
website</a>.</p>
<p>Of all my books, only the very first (<cite>Portable C and Unix<br />
Systems Programming</cite>, 1987) didn&#8217;t get webbed.  It was a decent<br />
seller, but the least successful of my books. It&#8217;s now out of print, made<br />
technically obsolete by things that happened in the early 1990s.  All<br />
three of my other books, the ones that got webbed, have remained<br />
continuously in print.</p>
<p>My four books do not a controlled experiment make, but the</p>
<p>thirteen years of experience with simultaneous print and Web<br />
publication that I&#8217;ve had suggests that Web availability has boosted<br />
the sales of the print versions tremendously.  And my publishers<br />
agree.  Even in 1991 I didn&#8217;t get resistance from MIT press, and<br />
Addison-Wesley was positively supportive of putting my most most<br />
recent one on the Web.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m one of a handful of technical-book writers who publishers treat<br />
like rock stars, because I have a large fan base and my name on a<br />
cover will sell a book in volumes that are exceptional for its<br />
category (for comparison my editor at AW mentions Bruce Eckel as<br />
another).  I&#8217;m not certain my experience generalizes to authors who<br />
<em>aren&#8217;t</em> rock stars.  On the other hand, it&#8217;s more than<br />
possible that I&#8217;m a rock star largely because I <em>have</em> been<br />
throwing my stuff on the Web since 1991. It&#8217;s even likely &mdash;<br />
after all, I was next to an unknown when I edited <cite>The New Hacker&#8217;s<br />
Dictionary</cite>.</p>
<p>So I don&#8217;t find the InstaWife&#8217;s experience very surprising.<br />
Webbing one&#8217;s books seems to be really effective way to build a fan<br />
base. My impression is that people start by browsing the the on-line<br />
versions of my books, then buy the paper copy partly for convenience<br />
and partly as what marketers call an identity good.</p>
<p>An identity good is something people buy to express their tie to a<br />
group or category they belong to or would like to belong to.  People<br />
buy <cite>The New Hacker&#8217;s Dictionary</cite> because they are, or want<br />
to be, the kind of person they think should own a copy of it.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the causal connection: A Web version can&#8217;t be an identity<br />
good, because it doesn&#8217;t sit on your bookshelf or your coffee table<br />
telling everybody (and reminding you!) who you are.  But Web exposure<br />
can, I think, help turn a book with the right kind of potential into<br />
an identity good. I suspect there is now a population of psychologists<br />
and social workers who perceive the InstaWife&#8217;s book as an identity<br />
good, and that (as with my stuff) that perception was either created or<br />
strongly reinforced by web exposure.</p>
<p>If so, this would explain why webbing her book made the auction<br />
price for the out-of-print paper version go up.  The price of the<br />
paper version reflects buyers&#8217; desires to be identifiable as members<br />
of the community of readers of the book.  By making softcopy available<br />
for download, the InstaWife enhanced the power of the paper version as<br />
an identity token, by making it easy for a larger population to learn<br />
the meaning of the token.</p>
<p>I would go so far as to predict that any book (or movie, or CD)<br />
that functions as an identity good will tend to sell more rather than<br />
less after Web exposure.  All three of my in-print books happen to be<br />
identity goods rather strongly, for slightly different but overlapping<br />
populations. I suspect the InstaWife&#8217;s book has this quality too.  About those<br />
things which aren&#8217;t identity goods, I can&#8217;t say.  Not enough experience.</p></p>
