Last week, The Sun announced that it would start charging for access to its web content in excess of 15 page views per month.  The Sun becomes the first Tribune paper to launch a paywall, but it joins similar trends at The New York Times, Boston Globe, and Dallas Morning News as mentioned in the paper’s announcement.   According to Paywall-Times.com, 12% of The New York Times’ paid digital subscribers are from outside the United States and the site’s total number of digital subscriptions hovers near 1 million.  So while The Sun is not breaking new ground, I wonder if its strategy takes into account its own audience and whether part of that audience’s traits might be aversion to paying for content.

In another word-wielding field–literature, or more specifically, the selling of it–a related discussion has taken place: Should bookstores charge admission to readings? A much discussed article this summer in The New York Times (published in June, which I just re-read for free!) quoted an early adopter of paid readings as stating that 10 percent of her store’s revenue comes from events.  There is nothing wrong with a business having diverse revenue streams via either ticketing or required book purchase.  Booksellers are trying to curb the trend where readers buy the book cheaper on-line and get it signed for free at a reading.  However, no reading is free to produce: on the low end there’s staff time and usually some sort of catering; on the high end there could be travel and an author’s honorarium (which is becoming more common and less modest because authors no longer make decent royalties from book sales).  That’s the program administration side; there’s also the author presentation side.  In The New Yorker’s “The Book Bench,” blogger Elizabeth Minkel quotes a Manhattan bookstore owner as saying “I think you have to have great events programming and charge later. I don’t think it’s there yet, but it’s getting there.”  This observation was on display at this past weekend’s Baltimore Book Festival: in some tents authors never made eye contact with their audiences or neglected the mic while others like Sherman Alexie really entertained the crowd, but remained faithful to their literary art.

At play here is both creating quality content and presenting it well.

I agree that good content produced by experienced professionals and trained artists has a value that consumers should be willing to pay for.  The public pays for movies, theater, and music.  Some may argue that I have an apples-and-oranges argument here, comparing the arts (often associated with entertainment) with media (often wrapped with freedom and access issues, as it should be). What I am focusing on here is the notion of paying for quality content that engages the audience.  I have attended plenty of miserable readings that I am glad were free.  I see plenty of links on baltimoresun.com that lead to fluff or stories that need development.  So, the apples-and-apples equation here is that both newspapers and presenters of literary events need to deliver consistently high-quality content before people will be primed to pay for it.

Furthermore, how are price points and thresholds determined?  According to The Sun’s own article, their site saw a record 52 million page views in August, so what was the calculus behind a 15 page-view allotment?  That threshold seems paltry, and I am sure there was other rationale at play to arrive at the $50 and $30 levels.  (Does the $2 Android app do an end-around on this fee-for-access model?)  How frequently will the content change, how thorough will the reporting become, will the annoying collapse/close ads be tamed?

Likewise, how does a bookstore owner determine Author X merits a freebie versus Author Y being worthy of a $5 door (or Author Z commandeering a $10, $20, or $50 admission)? How will author appearances be turned into richer events, what are the value-added benefits of attendance, will attendees buy at the store or bring their own copies previously purchased on Amazon?

And what is the consumer receiving that she can’t get elsewhere?

If I were The Sun’s publisher, I would be concerned that charging for content would decrease viewership, and perhaps spill over to fewer subscriptions to the print edition.  Similarly, if I were a bookstore owner, I would be concerned that charging admission to readings would decrease attendance, and perhaps spill over to fewer book sales.

In the best of all possible worlds, and its not inconceivable that we will see flush times again, I say people should pay for it.  Perhaps, however, the bottom-line really is timing: is now, with people still corralled by a miserable economy, the right time for on-line papers to charge for content and for bookstores to charge admission?  A less informed populace and a culturally deprived community seems like “the worst of times.”