[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Nick_Djinn

But seriously, how can you make the purchased copies more desirable and convenient than the pirated copies? If I download an ebook via torrent it will be finished faster than the checkout process, and I dont have to validate it or jump through any hoops. Why would I subject myself to difficulty just so I can pay more money?

The obvious answer is, "because I want my favorite authors to be able to afford to continue writing books."

You should also think about charging a fraction of the current price. A physical book has production and shipping and sales costs. How can you justify retail price when you cut out the manufacturer, the shipping, the distributor and the merchants and their employees? If you insist on robbing us then we are likely going to rob you instead.

Who is the "you" in this paragraph? Authors? Publishers? Ebook store managers?

There is no justification for charging $17 for 2mb of data.

Sure there is: it took three years work to assemble that data.

Another approach would be to EMBRACE the distribution of FREE books for everyone.

Who will be writing these free books? Gutenberg already provides thousands of free books for everyone.

How about this....We give away the books to anyone who wants them, for free, a limited number proportionate to what an advanced reader could read or what you are allowed to check out of a library at one time.
You can keep the book if you want it, but the book only works on one physical device, and to get it on another device is free but requires you to check it out again for that device, and goes towards your limit. There is no limit to how many the library can give out.

People have proposed a "subscription" ebook program; it's worth exploring, but there are some technological issues involved.

1) How do you make it only work on one device at a time? Does it only work on devices that are internet-accessible (and therefore, not on camping trips in the middle of nowhere)?

2) Who pays the authors? Taxes? (And how do you decide how much to pay them--a flat rate per word, so they're encouraged to write longer books, or based on the number of times their book is checked out, so they're encouraged to tell their friends to check out their books and not read them?)

3) Content choices: Will these libraries be carrying erotica and other controversial topic ebooks? Will everyone have access to them? Who will decide what's "explicit" and should be excluded from children's ebook searches?

The Library gets funding and pays 15 cents, or whatever amount, for every time the book is checked out to each device.

Ah, mythical library funding, which will pay the authors, the library database managers, the search-engine programmers, and everyone else involved in the stages between "story in author's head" and "words in front of a reader."

perhaps more for new releases up to a dollar with a co-payment required from the reader (waived for low income and those on public assistance),

Ooh! Effective micropayment software, requiring credit cards for library books (no more books for kids; they don't have bank accounts), sliding scale payments on a fair and rational basis ... wow, that's a lot of tech changes from the current systems.

you dont have to have some corporation siphoning off the profits to represent you. The artist gets it all.

So, the author will be hiring an editor up-front, before she starts making any money on the book? And possibly hiring a publicity specialist to promote her book to encourage more people to check it out?

This service via the public library would be paid for with taxes,

National income tax? Head tax on each person? State taxes, different in each region? How much will this tax be, and what happens when the budget is tight--does this money go away?

There is no reason to put corporate profits before our society....

Corporate profits are part of society.

We WANT people to read. If it costs only 15 cents to get somebody to read a book, we would be wealthier as a society.

Well, yes... if 15 cents per reader made sure the author would keep writing. Otherwise, we'd lose out on a lot of books.

There is a shortage of people reading FREE books. We can fix that by sending them whatever reading material they want, courtesy of your local public library, directly to your device absolutely free of charge, with no artificial limits on how many people can read it at one time because we are not here to protect corporations like Amazon.

No, we can't. Really. Many people don't care to read much of anything at all, and making books free & easy won't change that.

This whole rant, while obviously well-intentioned and heartfelt, shows a lack of understanding of how the publishing industry works, and how publicly-funded projects work.