Quote:
Originally Posted by acidzebra
Tell me how to compensate the author in a reasonable way while at the same time not keeping a broken system chugging along, and I will be right there. I think a lot of people will. And, yes, there will be people who simply take without ever wanting or intending to pay. There is no way to stop them, and in the world of the digital, there never will be. But people like you and Steven seem to think that left unchecked and without your finger-wagging, soon everyone will do it. Which simply isn't true.
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Where we differ fundamentally, I think, is your view that the current system IS "broken". You seem to think that publishers are irrelevent in a digital age. With respect, I disagree. If you've never written a book yourself, you're perhaps unaware of how much work a publisher does "behind the scenes". Very few authors are capable of producing commercially-successful work without the aid of an experienced editor to fix their mistakes (you only have to read the posts on this site - presumably populated by people whose literary knowlege is above average - to see how poor most posters' grammar is, for example). Although I suppose people COULD go to a copy-editor independently of a publisher, how many actually would do so, I wonder?
Forget the "printing" aspect of books - that's really rather a "red herring". Very few publishers (if any) print their own books, anyway. What publishers do is edit books, publicise them, and 1001 other things that the typical reader is probably completely unaware of. Authors need publishers, and digital distribution doesn't change that.
You ask "how to compensate the author in a reasonable way" and I'll answer - "buy the book". If there's a legit eBook available, buy it. If there isn't, buy the pBook and write to the publisher to tell them that you've done so, but you'd much rather have bought an eBook. We're all (presumably) eBook fans here; the way to demonstrate that is to support the legitimate eBook industry, and let authors and publishers know that we want more eBooks available.
This isn't "finger wagging", but common sense
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