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Comment by shinycode | Hacker News Reader

Actually if authors could sell directly I’ll gladly buy from them each and every time and cut off the middle man.

Sure, that sounds grand, but if setting up a little store is too much to ask, I'd settle for a consistent way to just send them money.

I'd love it if voluntary payment could be mobilized to the point where it's more profitable to authors than the shit treatment they're getting from Amazon. For many, piracy is about rejecting the problematic distribution mechanism, not stinginess. It would be great to have a way to provably put our money where our mouths are (provably, because making Amazon look bad is part of the fun).

What is making it complex for authors to sell directly?

Edit: hah, only 15 minutes late with my attempt at Socratic spiel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810056

A lot of authors are not technical people and/or are busy writing. There isn’t a simple system with a large audience of potential book purchasers that makes it easy for authors to sell their books because Amazon became that place but now wants to irritate its users by mangling the kindle.

Also unfortunately the problem lies when the platform has too much power and makes this relationship with the author disproportionate. At first such a platform seems like a good deal for everyone, except when it stops being one

> What is making it complex for authors to sell directly?

If an author living at place X sells directly to a reader living at place Y and it is not true that for all governments G PlaceInJurisdictionOf(X,G) == PlaceInJurisdictionOf(Y,G), then the author is making a cross border sale which can have annoying tax considerations.

The internet made it very easy for someone to physically run a small business that conducts transactions across dozens or even hundreds of borders, especially if they are selling intangible goods, but as far as I know the legal environment has not been updated for that.

Hence it is a lot easier to use a middleman who handles the legal stuff with cross border transactions and you only have to deal with the middleman.

True, my original view of the matter was too simplistic

Marketing, mostly.

the decision is on you: if you like it, you send some cash. if you just send five bucks that'll be like what author gets from about a hundred "legitimate sales".

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