Textual works (novels, short stories, novels) have traditionally been published in the form of paper books, but with the development of network technologies, classical books are increasingly being replaced by electronic means of publication. Copying the same information and textual moreover is not a simple task on the net, but very simple. In this regard, there is a problem of illegal copying of copyright works - the authors are unhappy. Users, I think, are also unhappy, because, firstly, it’s bad to steal, and secondly, copyright advocates create artificial barriers and restrictions for data distribution in the network.
However, the essence of the conflict is that even though the users and the authors have the same goals - distribution and access to the works, but fundamentally different tasks. The user wants to get everything at once and for free, the author wants to receive a fee for each work until the end of life. My idea represents a certain compromise solution that would partially satisfy both parties.
So, the author wrote the story and wants to be read and paid him money. The author is good, but completely unknown and most likely the publisher will not bother with it. Then the author enters the site and can add his work to the list of available for reading. Terms of publication are as follows:
- The author puts part of the work into free access (the volume of the available part is determined by the author himself, for example, the first chapter).
- The author establishes a period after which the next part of the work will be posted (the author himself also determines the volume).
- The author sets the amount of money that he wants to see on the account of his account on the site and the minimum amount of the contribution.
- The user comes and reads part of the work in the public domain.
- The user sees what amount should be collected for the publication of the next part and how much is collected at the moment.
- If the user likes the work, and he wants to continue, he adds to the author’s account any amount that he considers adequate to obtain a continuation (not lower than the minimum again, established by the author).
- If by the end of the term specified by the author the amount is collected, the next part is published and the author decides on the publication of the next part and the terms of the publication.
- If the amount is not collected, then the author decides either to publish with the current amount or to change the conditions for publishing a new part (extension of time, changing the amount required for publication).
- All this is repeated until the work is published in full or the author removes it from publication.
- The work published in whole or in part remains freely available to all comers, the author receives the amount collected for all published parts.
Thus, the author sets the fee for the publication himself and receives a one-time payment for the publication of his work. The work of the author is in the public domain and it can be read by the largest number of users (the author’s popularity is increasing). The user can either pay (make a reasonable contribution to the total amount) for the publication of the next part, or wait and trust that someone else will pay. On the other hand, the user will have access to all works laid out and paid for earlier.
Such a system, I think, will be most suitable for large works with a large number of chapters, because the longer the work does not end, the more users will read the already published part and, therefore, you can increase the fee for publishing the subsequent parts.
The above is just an idea and most likely at the present time its implementation will not be accepted either by the authors (what if my work is worth more?) Or by users (you have to pay, e!). This is just one example of a more civilized interaction between the author and the reader in the network.