Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
All these methods are available now. If anyone wishes to try any other alternative method as well, they are free to do so with or without copyright. The telling fact is that currently no alternative method to paying for the content has been shown to provide anywhere near the same rewards.
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Currently, those methods are working within the constraints of copyright. They haven't been tried in a (digital) marketplace that allows free widespread copying. (There have been past markets with no copyright laws; in all of them, the resources for copying were expensive enough to keep unauthorized copies to a small impact.)
There are no book clubs today focused around tip jars for favorite authors. No publishing houses selling signed postcards with bookcover pictures for $3 each (at least, not as a standard item). No websites of author consortiums selling subscriptions for $10/month, for first legit access to chapters posted twice a week, and the opportunity to download the whole thing as an ebook for an additional $10, available for two weeks after the final chapter's been posted, until the story goes back into the archives and will return next year.
Those are non-viable business arrangements right now; they can't compete with the convenience of "Download ebook forever for $8." However, there are people who'd be happy for paid subscriptions to favorite authors' websites, and moreso if they knew their money was directly supporting the author. There are people who'd happily buy signatures & other memorabilia. People who'd pay for the right to join a chatroom with an author.
We can't know if those, and whatever other methods show up, would be enough to support authors, because those methods aren't economically sound right now; copyright is a much simpler way for authors to make money from their work. And trucks are much more efficient and simple ways to deliver mail than on horseback--but if the internal combustion engine were outlawed tomorrow, we'd still find a way to deliver messages & packages to each other, even though horses probably wouldn't be a major factor in it.