Hello Mikey

Not churlish at all. You raise a good point about the value put on a piece of work (or a language lesson for that matter).

In response, firstly I’d say that I am not advocating giving away something that someone else is trying to sell. If for example I published a book and gave it away while someone else was trying to sell it, I can quite see why that would piss the other seller off. My book would have two conflicting values (free and the full price the seller is trying to sell it for). That would probably also annoy people interested in my work who might have paid the other seller’s price and then see that they could have got it for free.

Secondly, I agree that things given away for free can often be given little value or respect by the receiver, though this is not alway the case by any means. I think this is more to do with the amount a person would want to own something rather than the amount they have to pay for it. If something gives pleasure or some other sort of value (informations for instance) then just because it is free doesn’t mean it won’t have value.

Thirdly, I would add in giving something away artists (or language teachers) should do so as part of a plan. Clearly if I gave everything I produce away I will never make anything from my work (and I want and need to make money from my work). It makes sense to find things to give away that have costs (in terms of both money and time) that don’t increase in relation to volume (ie giving one away is no different that giving 10000). Using the internet for distribution is a wonderful way to achieve this.

My experience of working to this model has been very positive. My recent 75 Ways to Draw booklet was given away on Flickr. It cost me nothing to offer the download, and as I was already producing a limited edition of the booklet then there was only little extra work involved in making a downloadable version. Instead of producing a digital version of the booklet I created a version that needed to be downloaded, printed out and made up into a finished book, meaning that whist people didn’t need to pay for the booklet that did have a cost in terms of time in creating it. I do think that meant that they were only likely to do that if they really wanted to booklet. I was also very keen on the idea of the booklet existing physically, rather than simply as a pdf.

This is something I’m planning on repeating. I have something new ready to appear within the next couple of days.

As an aside, whilst you might have thought that offering the booklet for free might have meant that people were less likely to buy it, that doesn’t seem to have been the case as the edition has all but sold out. I suspect that there will always be people keen to own something original even if there is a facsimile available.