I know I’m not the only author to think about alternative ways of author compensation, but I think it might still be a little early in the game to see a readily apparent best practice emerge.

I can’t really see the tech industry subsidizing creative content via taxes. For one thing, it would involve the government, and therefore be notoriously slow, and probably tough to administer, too. Also, the internet exists outside of physical boundaries of sovereignty, so whose government collects the revenues, how are they distributed, etc. And that’s not even bringing the whole American Culture War into it. Google “Robert Mapplethorpe” and count the exploding heads.

Not to say that a direct micro-economic model couldn’t work–having a tip jar at an author site has given some authors recompense where they might not have seen any otherwise. I’d just question how much the layers of intervention and administration would dilute the essential transactions.

As for ads in cheap/free ebooks, I don’t think I’d ever place an ad in the middle of a book, because the last thing I want to do is remind a reader that they’re reading a book. Perhaps before the start or end of the book, but it would have to be a very carefully considered thing. I wouldn’t want to find myself advertising something I didn’t want to sell. If anything, my advertisements would be geared towards my other books! Advertising runs the risk of diluting the cultural relevance of a book–essentially playing the role of corporate subsidiary to a work.

But yes, as an author I have thought of alternative compensation. I’ve ruled out some methods like book touring and/or speaking for fees on a personal basis, and shelved others because doing stuff like limited-edition specially bound volumes as a small-potatoes author would seem more like an ego-trip than a value-add. Again–personal basis–for other authors, these may be the answers they’re looking for. Others still might be able to take advantage of your #2 suggestion, or even work to enact #1.

Many authors are complaining of book piracy when their books are OUT OF PRINT!!! so how is sharing this file digitally harming anyone?? If anything, it GAINS more readers for that author.

In some cases, file sharing can hurt an author’s chances of putting that book back into print, or re-issuing it, or selling the foreign rights. At any rate it cuts into the author’s control of those rights.

The internet has freed authors. You don’t need a publisher anymore to gain an audience to sell your boooks.

Publishers do more than just sell books, though. They provide covers, editing, marketing, and distribution. And to be perfectly honest, even before the Internet Revolution, you still didn’t need a publisher to sell books. As long as you don’t mind actually selling the books. Which in turn takes away time and effort from writing them.

I’m not sure of the answers. I know that ebook piracy is still waters that run deep. I refuse to have the knee-jerk reaction of “ZOMG it’s teh_EEEVUL!” I understand just enough to know that there’s a whole different culture around file-sharing (as an aside, I torrent seed for legal apps. I run a linux rig and when a new distro goes live, every single FTP mirror from Sacramento to Stockholm just gets hammered–the only reasonable way to get the distro out there is via Bittorrent. So no problems here with P2P protocols).

I’m saying that we as authors need to understand the digital culture and a digital reality that includes file-sharing, legal or not, in order to figure out how we can write and still feed our cats. But I think that the onus is going to be on the authors and artists–and I’d rather it be so–rather than the lawyers and the cops.

I’m talking about:

1. creators paid by taxes on computers, computer devices, internet connection service fees

2. ads in your cheap or free ebooks

There are lots of people and places in the world where it’s very hard to get access to good Western books so digital sharing is a way for all our cultures to “share the wealth” of education, culture, learning, values, etc. Many authors are complaining of book piracy when their books are OUT OF PRINT!!! so how is sharing this file digitally harming anyone?? If anything, it GAINS more readers for that author.

The internet has freed authors. You don’t need a publisher anymore to gain an audience to sell your boooks. You can get on youtube, facebook, myspace, cooperative authors’ sites, etc to gain your audience for free to cheap. The internet is the author’s savior and not its punisher. It’s only because of the internet that more people in the third world and Europe and other countries even KNOW about many authors. The only authors it doesn’t help are those who are accepted by the publishers but whose work is rejected by the public. If the public ACCEPTS the work(s) but is not paying, then find a way so that they pay either in cash or eyeballs such as advertisements or as I said, government taxes.

Going after book piracy is like going after music piracy and we know how unsuccessful that has been. The music industry has been forced to accept the digital road to compensation. Going after piracy only stifles culture of transmitting education/learning/values.

I’m all for compensating the authors for furtherance of culture and learning (and of course to feed your cat) It’s just finding a working mechanism that both sides can live with.