When biz journalism sites charge for access

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon writes Monday about journalism sites that want to charge consumers for access, in the wake of being asked to be on the advisory board for Fiwords.com, the site for The Financial Writer’s Stylebook, which is charging for access.

Salmon writes, “Roush asked me to be on the advisory board of the site, but I started pushing back when it launched with a high and impenetrable paywall.

“The site’s content is useful, and the site itself is very well designed, so one would think that the most natural thing in the world would be to make it free. It would rapidly rise to the top of many Google searches, it would become a loved and much-used resource, it would be able to crowdsource help with tricky definitions, and it would be a sought-after advertising venue for many financial-services companies. Instead, Roush and his publisher have put up this paywall, on the grounds, he told me, that ‘we’ve put all of the content from the book, and more, onto the site, so if we gave it away for free, no one would buy the book.’

“That’s silly — and just as solipsistic as those newspaper publishers who fear cannibalizing themselves. If people want to look up financial terms online, they’re going to do so whether or not fiwords.com is free. If it is free, they’ll use it; if it isn’t, they won’t. They’re not going to buy a fiwords.com subscription on the off chance that the definitions there turn out to be substantially better than the definitions elsewhere.

“More to the point, they’ll be more likely to buy the book if they regularly get a lot of value out of its content online. The experience of publishers who have put works up for free online is very consistent: print sales go up, not down.”

Read more here. DISCLOSURE: I am one of the authors of the stylebook. I disagree with Salmon, but I think it’s only fair to post his argument.