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Someone could make a living at this

There's this blog I read called Techdirt. It's full of stories about the new economy and copyright and patent and trademark law, and it also has tales of new media success. Most of the media success seems to be musicians making a living by harnessing the power of social media. They manage to sell t-shirts (I've been hearing since I started being interested in music that bands make their money not from CD sales, or concert tickets, but t-shirt sales).

I read a while back, I forget where on the internet, that unlike music fans, fiction readers don't buy t-shirts. It was probably something to with romance writers, probably linked to by booksquare. So anyway, the argument is that publishers need to keep charging huge sums for ebooks and stuff, because there are NO synergies (I know, 90s weasel-word) for novels, like there are for music.

And maybe I'm extremely rare, but I do not believe this to be true. Back long ago when I was reading that George R.R. Martin stuff, I desperately wanted a Winter is Coming t-shirt, probably grey with a wolf on it. In fact, I still do. Before I even realized that authors had websites, I had found a place to buy it. Or so I thought. After six months or so, Paypal returned my money to me, because the website could never get it together to send me a shirt.

There are other places on the web to get a Winter is Coming t-shirt. But I suspect that George R.R. Martin would not get my money if I bought from one of those places, and that makes me feel bad.

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