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Originally Posted by TadW
Whether a book is printed on paper and bound or formatted for download as an e-book, publishers still have all the costs leading up to that stage. We still pay for the author advance,
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Authors can be paid in advance using the Obama book tax. Simply put, based on the measured popularity and quality of their previous works, when an author is in "writing a new book" mode, he can get an automatic advance payment from the book tax system. Then based on the measured quality and popularity of their work once it's released, it will determine the value of that author if he wishes to dedicate more time in writing mode.
Also, an author could choose to publish his writing in real-time, perhaps even solicit commentary and suggestions from his fans while he is in the process of writing. That type of real-time publishing activity can also provide more precise statistics for the book tax system knowing exactly how much advance payment the author is entitled to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TadW
the editing, the copyediting, the proofreading,
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Just as translating, all this can be done by an unlimited amount of people collaboratively online using online collaboration tools. The author can pick the best editors, translators, proofreaders to help him using Web 2.0 tools.
Those edit slaves can get paid very precisely per word that they thus help edit, copyedit, translate and so forth.
Translation can happen as well using a tool like Google Translate and then by manual collaborative proofreading of that automatic output.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TadW
the cover and interior design, the illustrations, the sales kit, the marketing efforts, the publicity, and the staff that needs to coordinate all of the details that make books possible in these stages.
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None of those things are needed anymore. Marketing efforts and publicity are not needed anymore when the content will automatically reach its optimal target audience using web 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 algorithms can provide the best possible recommendations algorithms using the wisdom of crowds to rate and categorize every published word out there.