Every Monday Zebra Eclipse updates with a new Herd. The Herd is a digest of related links to stories appropriate to the blog. The goal is to show the common evolution of agency and publisher and to highlight the influence of creators, curators and community moderators.

• The Economics of Netflix’s $100 Million New Show
  A strong article from The Wire that looks into the business case behind spending $100m on a show like House of Cards when that means you need to attract 2.6m new customers. As it turns out Netflix may be overpaying for nonexclusive content anyway. The other catch? Netflix doesn’t own the syndication rights to House of Cards; production company Media Rights Capital does.
• Anybody in the news industry who still isn’t taking Buzzfeed seriously isn’t taking the internet seriously
  UsVsTh3m’s Martin Belam writes up his notes from news:rewired and comes to the sensible conclusion – the news industry needs to take Buzzfeed seriously. Buzzfeed doesn’t create content for algorithms, but for people and it aggressively pushing and testing what makes people share stories.
• Amazon increases price of Prime in U.K. and Germany as it rolls in Lovefilm streaming video
  I’ve just subscribed to Netflix and now Amazon’s gone and increased my Prime membership from £50 to £80. Why? To give me Lovefilm, a Netflix competitor, as part of the package. I can’t opt-out. Interestingly, if I didn’t read I could have a Lovefilm only account. Despite the price hike I suspect I’ll keep Prime and it’ll certainly make me connect Lovefilm into my devices. I think Netflix could do with a dramatic hike in the UK content.
• Green Man Gaming ‘to consider software publishing in 2014’
  Greenman Gaming is considering expanding from retail and into publishing. It the retailer did make the jump it would be with small teams and with a focus on digital distribution. As CEO Paul Sulyok pointed out they’re not about to negotiate multi-million pound deals with Game and HMV to sell Greenman games.
• LinkedIn Opens Publishing Power to All Users
  LinkedIn has been allowing “power users” to write long form updates for a while. This week they extended that program to all users. The result will likely be more thought leadership posts on on the platform, networking and possibly even ad revenue.
• Journalists seeking accreditation for Brit Awards asked to agree coverage of sponsor Mastercard
  The BRIT Awards House PR agency wanted journalists to use Mastercard’s #PricelessSurprises hashtag with positive coverage as part of being accredited to cover the event. It’s a dangerous line; you can encourage people to tweet but you shouldn’t make it a condition. The journalists are complaining – on Twitter and using the hashtag. This won’t be pleasing MasterCard at all. It’s a fumble by the agency and the journalists saw peer-permission and are piling in.
• Most Amazon bestselling authors aren’t making minimum wage
  Research suggests that most of Amazon’s bestselling authors aren’t making minimum wage. Of course, this just means from money earned via Amazon sales. It’s a study that’s raised some questions both in terms of how it was done and what it might mean if true.