Sustaining on-line book sites
- From: Ben Crowell <crowell01@[redacted]>
- Subject: Sustaining on-line book sites
- Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 19:15:10 -0700
David Reed wrote:
>Maybe what we (all of you) need to do is reestablish the idea of patronage
>for literature. Release etexts that plug the patron in a short dedication
>at the beginning of the released etexts.
This makes a lot of sense. I have a book reviewing site that focuses
on free books (http://theassayer.org), and thought I might be able to convince,
say, 20 people to support it with small monthly payments via PayPal.
Instead what happened was that one person, Lion Kimbro, stepped forward
and sent me the money for a year's worth of web hosting. (Lion's on
Book People now -- thanks, Lion!!!)
Shareware and begware are predicated on the assumption that everyone
will pay an equal amount based on their charitable impulses, but
if you talk to someone at a charitable foundation, I'm sure you'll
find that they get a disproportionate amount of their money from
a small number of people who have money and are generous.