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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

I read that paper some time back, and it strikes me as a pretty good idea.

In short, a (potential) writer would propose: I'll write this book for a minimum of $X. Interested readers would put into an escrow system whatever that book is worth it to them. If the total escrowed contributions reach $X (presumably by some deadline), the author will write the book and release it for all to read, collecting the escrowed funds. If the kitty doesn't reach $X, or the author doesn't make good, the escrowed funds are returned.

Obviously this generalizes to other media as well.

The only think I don't see this covering well is the speculation on as-yet-unproven writers. Who is going to take a chance on you so you can make your reputation? Maybe that doesn't matter; I think that today, writers, musicians, etc., typically produce their first works on their own to get a publisher interested.

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There is precedent for what you describe: prog-rock band Marillion did this in 2001: http://marillion.com/band/bio2004.htm (4th paragraph).

"[...] it was the revolutionary concept of asking their fans to pre-order and pay for the recording costs an album some 12 months in advance of its release that hit the headlines in 2001. Astonishingly, over 12,000 of their fans pre-ordered and an additional deal was struck with EMI to market the resulting ‘Anoraknophobia’ album."

Not sure if escrow was involved though.

It's a good idea but it doesn't consider transaction costs. That's the main problem.

Imaging you're a reader with US$ 1000 per year to spend on books: how do spend it if there's a large supply of book offers like these?

That sounds like kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/

This is exactly what they did with the "Designing Obama" book on Kickstartr (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simplescott/designing-ob...).

it probably works better at the granularity of "chapter" instead of "novel".

Where the first chapter is free, so you can decide if you want to pay to get sucked further in.

Serialized works used to be one of the ways periodicals attracted readers (and advertisers).

I disagree. I don't even want to start the thing if I don't know that there is an ending. If I buy a couple of chapters and then it peters out, I'm cheated out of my ending.

Also, I'd want the writer to produce a complete book. I imagine that sometimes developments in later chapters will force some revision to the earlier ones, as plot lines are fleshed out. Releasing a chapter at a time won't allow that.

Many of Charles Dickens' works were written in this way. They were published in periodicals and magazines, and he would normally be writing them as they were being published, rather than writing the whole book first.

It reminds me somewhat of the old patronage system. Why did Mozart write so much music? Besides the fact that he was born to do it, he had a family to feed -- he had a patron. The patron paid him to write music (and operas and whatnot).

With the internet, couldn't we all be micro-patrons?

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