Quote:
Originally Posted by applewine
E-books make sense to have as a purely service model like music.
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Uh, no.
Of all digital media, music is the one that is least comparable to ebooks.
Music streaming builds off the economics and payment system established last century for radio. Books in the US do not have a precursor lending model within living memory. (You have to go back to the 19th century, pre-Carnegie, to find commercial subscription libraries.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscription_library
So there are no mutually agreeable terms that subscription services can refer to in ramping up, the way music and video did.
Which isn't to say a model acceptable to both authors and readers can't possibly be crafted, but so far there is no evidence that near-sale payouts will be viable.