DanDare wrote:Still looking for someone interested in writing book reviews.

hackenslash wrote:

DanDare wrote:Still looking for someone interested in writing book reviews.

What are you thinking? New books only, pop-sci, weighty?

Writers, artists, and public intellectuals are nearing some sort of precipice: Their audiences increasingly expect digital content to be free. Jaron Lanier has written and spoken about this issue with great sagacity. You can purchase his book here, which most of you will not do, or you can watch him discuss these matters for free. The problem is thus revealed even in the act of stating it. How can a person like Lanier get paid for being brilliant? This has become an increasingly difficult question to answer.

“Science journalists are very interested because free Internet has damaged more science reporting than other types of reporting,” suggested Chris Wilkins. With the advent of free Internet publications, print publications, especially newspapers and magazines, have lost readership and advertising revenues. Even though revenues in digital magazines and newspapers are growing, they still don’t fill the gap created by the loss in print ads.

As a founding member of Fraxion Payments, Danny Stevens, now senior editor of the recently created online magazine Science Works (mid-2011), got involved “because of the lack of any sensible method for running commercial magazines that are entirely on the Internet, i.e. without a paper version.”

“I like the system not for its technology, but for what it does,” Stevens explained. “It’s a return to selling your content directly rather than selling advertising indirectly. Also, there is the network effect.”

Recently, Alison Binney's New Science Journalism online magazine converted to using Fraxion Payments, and Sheffield University set up a magazine to publish their science journalism faculty’s articles using the Fraxion Payments system. Each has brought a few more readers into the network – about 135 science reporters have signed up with New Science Journalism. “These additions can only build sales for us all,” Stevens added. “And of course, it allows me to give editors and reviewers a piece of the sales.”