Quote:
Originally Posted by Enkidu of Abydos
Several apps I use have a PayPal donate button or a PayPal adress in the About window for donations and are free otherwise... Similar to your idea.
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Yeah, some of my favorite apps are donation ware, some of my most favorite apps are free ware. Go figure. Books fall into their own category though wouldn't you agree? But in a way they don't, what is an app but an expression of code? What is a book but an expression of an idea?
This is from that essay collection by Doctorow that spellbanisher mentioned earlier,
"I don't think it's practical to charge for copies of electronic works. Bits aren't ever going to get harder to copy. So we'll have to figure out how to charge for something else. That's not to say you can't charge for a copy-able bit, but you sure can't force a reader to pay for access to information anymore."
Doctorow writes quite a bit about sales from things auxiliary to the text itself. I think we can all agree that this might not work for the independent artist. Which is my favorite kind of artist. And their art is the kind I am most interested in preserving as we move beyond copyright.
Maybe this distribution method won't work for mainstream artists, maybe it won't work for those whose purpose of creation is the profit motive, maybe it doesn't need to. But I am confident that it will work and work well for those who wish to see their books distributed to a wide audience as easily as possible and then perhaps watch happily as a small but adequate portion of their audience compensates them for their contribution.
