[latepaul]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

IOW... the public becomes the publisher, deciding (before they've seen the work) whether it should be done, and based upon whether they thought my price was fair. And the writer doesn't retain copyright. Doesn't sound too attractive to me personally, but I suppose some writers might be interested.

Well the thing about this model is that it works with or without copyright. So in terms of what would you do without copyright it's a possible way to reward authors. However it's also an alternative to traditional publishing with existing copyright.

An arrangement like that puts a lot of pressure on the writer to cave to public demands in order to accept their money; so, if the public says, "Write me a 'Harry Potter as a parent' story, or you get nothing," that's what you're stuck with. And more complex concepts won't get past the pitch stage, because the public won't pay for something they don't "get," and probably won't "get" until after they've read it.

No more so than traditional publishing. Until recently you had to convince basically one of a handful of large companies to let you write your book (or buy it once you had) and they would have similar concerns about what sells.

Of course now you can self-publish much more easily. But still, if you're writing something the public doesn't want how does that help? You'll sell a few copies and get it out there but you won't recoup anything for the time you spent.

What this method does is give you a way to pre-finance a project - provided you can pitch it successfully. If you're happy to finance it yourself - by working a day job or living off previous books earnings - then fair enough. And if it's really the kind of thing people won't immediately "get" then perhaps you'll have to do that anyway. But it's likely such a book wouldn't pay for itself anyway (or would take a long time to do so).

So the only writers with a degree of autonomy become the popular 1% with a highly successful track record... and the other writers are consigned to another slush pile.

I think this will always be true whatever the method of selling books. To get autonomy you need to sell enough copies to make enough money to live off and not all books do that.

In my simplistic view it works like this:

Let's say it takes you 3months of writing fulltime to write a book. In the current model based on copyright you invest that time upfront hoping that you'll sell enough to recoup it (and make a profit). In this model your upfront investment is however much it takes to do the pitch. You set your price at whatever you need to cover the writing time (plus profit). If you make it you can sit down to write knowing the bills are paid.

The question is - is it easier to sell a known quantity (finished book) versus pre-selling an idea? Well it's worth remembering that every book is an unknown quantity to some extent before you actually read it yourself. As a reader, I never really know - even with great reviews etc - whether a book is going to work for me. So in some ways buying a book this way is as much a risk as buying it the old-fashioned way.

As I said, I'm really interested to see if this works.