thread: 2009-10-27 : Book Publishing - Some Startling Numbers
On 2009-10-28, jenskot wrote:
From Ben:
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One of the things which I couldn't figure out about your thread, is the idea that any product would sell anything "on it's own." Products don't act on their own: a sale requires at least a buyer and a seller, and usually requires much more community infrastructure than that (cross-promotion, AP reports, reviews, websites, IPR or other collectives, adverts in other related games, author presence on websites, a payment system, buyer played the game with a friend, etc.) I think that these sorts of community connections are going to be increasingly important for creative people to foster, as we move out of the "selling widgets" model and into the "support the artist" model."
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100% agree.
My thread was a reaction to friends who lamented that it wasn't enough to simply make a product available for sale and have it be a successes without community infrastructure and connections.
That said, to counter argue myself a bit, several iphone apps are succeeding on innovation alone from anonymous creators with no marketing. Their innovation leads to good reviews which leads to high ratings and then high downloads.
But this is becoming harder as the number of iphone apps available increases, especially ones with high ratings. And iphone apps have the advantage of having 1 place where you can get them with a strong user rating and review system and sorting options and the ability to immediately download and try a demo with no commitment.
