More TV Shows Offering Reasons To Buy; Castle's Successful Character-Written Novel
from the creative-business-models dept
We always hear from people that certain types of digital content can't come up with scarce "reasons to buy," and yet we always seem to hear of new and creative ways that it's being done anyway. Back in December we wrote about how the TV sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had turned ridiculous on-air products into the real thing and they were selling quite well. Now, PrometheeFeu points out that the popular ABC TV show Castle has come out with a real book supposedly by the lead character in the show, who (in the TV show) is a professional writer. Not only that, but the book itself has hit the NY Times best seller list. Now, it's not entirely clear who wrote the book (when asked, the producers of the show insist that it was the character in the program), but the book has gotten decent reviews and ABC is pitching the book on its website (including free chapter downloads). One assumes that ABC likely gets a cut of the sales as well. It's yet another neat attempt to combine an infinite good with a scarce one to make that scarce one more valuable. I would imagine that the book wouldn't sell nearly as well if it hadn't been tied to such a TV program.
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Filed Under: books, business model, castle, cwf, novels, rtb, tv shows
Companies: abc, disney
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Sigh
Sorry...just had to get that one out of the way....
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My memory is a bit hasy, but I think the book was written by Timmy [the midget Doll by] under the guise of Tabitha [the witch who lost her witch powers] so they could pay back taxes on the place they lived in. Normally Tabitha would "magic" away the tax burden; but for some reason she lost her power and couldn't.
It included tons of secrets and was the talk of the "Show" for the summer it came out.
Why do I know this?
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Re:
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...but can you buy it on the Kindle?
I guess it is interesting in a "hey, look... they managed to sell something" kind of way, but I don't see this as progress towards monetizing artistic creation in the Internet age.
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But...
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Castle is fantastic
Bravo to ABC for trying it, whether it works out or not.
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No access.
But I can tell people about the new webseries that launched some time ago Riese the Series.
Or the new open movies that are popping up.
Still giving money to ABC doesn't seems right is more then that right now, is about privacy, rights, uses and others things and although ABC is being creative I'm encourage to promote copyrighted stuff unless it comes with an open license.
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No access.
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Newspaper Advertisment
Especially when they were on hiatus. Little mini stories.
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Sex scene?
Mmmm.
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Lost already did that
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Re: Lost already did that
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Re: Dark Helmet
The opportunities are endless. For example, why not have the creators of the proto Cylons in Caprica issue blueprints and tech stuff? There are enough Battlestar otaku that it would break even, as well as giving people another reason to tune in. There, you can have that one for free, Internets.
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Re: Re: Dark Helmet
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Just a creative way...
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The book is basically another episode of the show with the same characters with different names and yes, that steamy sex scene with Nikki Heat. (More than one actually) And in the typical fashion of the show, it mixes the predictable with the unexpected enough to keep you wondering who's going to end up in jail.
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Fan of the show and bought the book
However, after hearing the Castle buzz on the Internets, I used "alternative means" to watch the first season so I could catch up and start watching the second season, and now I'm a fan. I just bought the books a couple of days ago.
Of course, if I constrained myself to only normal channels of distribution I probably would have never even watched the show.
As a side note, I tried to buy the book while on vacation in Florida a couple of weeks ago and two "national" booksellers I went to were both sold out so I had to wait to pick it up this week.
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hardly groundbreaking
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Books have a future?
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