Quote:
Originally Posted by mogui
The consequences are dire for writers unless we can discover another business model. Two have been suggested here. One is DRM under author control, and another is advertising subsidy. Are there other ideas? Is there a better place than MR to discover them?
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Donations is another one. Some authors already have websites where they offer their books for free while asking for donations.
Another possibility is a foundation (also donators-supported) that could pay the author's rights.
However, if we think of well-succeeded foundations, like Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation or Wikimedia Foundation, we have to consider that those do not have to worry about paying any rights to the authors.
I'm not sure if a "Free eBooks Foundation" could get enough donations to pay to all their authors. Unless they'd use a "received donations /ebooks' downloads" model.