Thanks for the thoughtful response, and thanks for calling me out on some of these points. You make several excellent arguments, and they will spawn a revision and clarification of this essay.

I think your point about confusing value is economics is an apt one. I'll cop to it. My main point, and I think the latter point half of the essay fails to convey it, is that I'm curious about the emotional value and significance that people assign to digital goods versus material goods. The latter half of the essay stray too far from that point, and I think the essay suffers for it.

Regardless, I'm glad you chose to respond, and I'm glad to see discussion happening on the topic overall.

>> Digital content has zero material production cost

In fact, no. Computers, microphones, internet connections all these things have costs. Digital content has zero *marginal* production cost. And there's an important distinction here. The first audio file of How to Succeed in Evil cost me quite a lot to produce. For you to download it costs almost nothing at all.

>>Because we can purchase digital products instantly, and because they
>> can be replaced easily, I think we value them less.

Again, I disagree. The trouble, I think, is that you are confusing the cost of acquisition with value. These things are not and can never be equal. When you buy something you always value it more than it costs to get. Later on you might feel differently. (What was I thinking one-clicking Menuedo's greatest hits for $8.99)

The cost of consuming a podiobook is not how much you pay to get it. It's what you give up by consuming it. Just like any other book. While I'm reading or listening, I can't be doing other things. Talking on the phone, for example. Watching a movie.

In many instances, audiobooks have a higher value than print because you can consume them and, say, take the dog for a walk, clean out the garage. drive to Toledo. But still, we give up a range of activities when we consume audio fiction. Listening to Meneudo's greatest hits is one of them. That's the true, or opportunity, cost.

The only way you can know, truly know, what someone values is to observe the choices they make. And because people take the 15 some-odd hours it takes to listen to my novel, I know they value it.

And, for me, as well as many of the people who are involved in the podiobook community, their is added value because we are part of something. The interaction with the creators, the ownership in a work as it comes together, the proprietary feeling of knowing that you have discovered something in the rough — that seems to have enough value for people that they will forego listening to a traditional audiobook.

> And like the majority of impulse buys, the majority of those purchases
> (iPhone games, iTunes singles, etc) transition quickly from something
> shiny to kipple1 in a matter of days, sometimes even hours.

As it ever was. We do this with all kinds of things. Like Hula Hoops. Pet Rocks. Whatever. It's just easier for this behavior to take place. Because the transaction costs are lower.

> has the advent of digital content fundamentally changed they way we
> think about purchasing goods, and if so, is that change for the better?

I think not. It has merely lowered the transaction costs. Better is purely a matter of one's own judgment. I do not believe humanity is infinitely improvable. Nor do I see any evidence that humanity has changed much in recorded history. Especially the way we think. So not better, not worse. Just is.

> Or, has this change made consumption a reflex, a non-thought?

I believe this to be a logical impossibility. To buy something (and that's what we're talking about here — buying right?) requires volition. An act of will. Hunger is biological. What we do with it is purposeful.

Are you confusing someone stuck in the airport saying “ah, what the hell, this game is only a buck” with mindlessness?

> In both cases, what does that say about the bond we have with the
> content, what is it’s relative value to us when compared to a real-world
> physical product?

In both cases, I think it's the same. The bond with a story is what we take away from it. How it changes us. After listening to Quarter Share, I'm never going to view fiction in quite the same way again. For me Nate did something remarkable. He made the everyday heroic and noble. Not in an over the top way, but in a very comfortable way. My experience of that story was totally unique.

The binding, the pages, the file format, the physical thing? Who cares? And why should they?

> Capitalism is, by it’s nature, driven by consumption.

So's everything else. Baby gets hungry and Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. The question is how are you going to make the baby food and the shoes and in what quantity?

But that's a whole other can of worms.

I tried to post a comment on Chris Miller most recent post on Unquiet Desperation. He asks some excellent questions about how we calculate the value of creative works if we acquire them in digital form versus tangible form. I say tried because his comm…

Do we values 'goods' less now? Maybe. But perhaps we've always valued them too much to begin with.