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Why am I willing to offer you money for a promise you wrote or will write a book? And why wouldn’t I just wait for others to pay for it? It’s not comparable to
by cgriswald 6y ago
Why am I willing to offer you money for a promise you wrote or will write a book? And why wouldn’t I just wait for others to pay for it?
It’s not comparable to physical items. For those, even if the promises aren’t kept, what is promised is generally clear. Usually the Kickstarter is just to bootstrap the production with the intention of future sales so there are incentives in place to make a quality product. And if I want the product I can either donate to the Kickstarter or pay for the product afterwards. In no case can I just get a free one.
- zucker42 6y ago> Why am I willing to offer you money for a promise you wrote or will write a book? Generally, reputation is sufficient check to fraud in situations like this. In a simple setup, you may trust the author because they've written many books in the past, and fraud is punishable by law. If the author is new or wants to provide extra assurances, they could release the first few chapters of the book, or in special cases have separate goals for each chapter. In an imaginable more commercialized system, a publishing company might pay the author and advance to write the book, and the handle ransoming the book. As far as the free-rider problem goes, there is probably some issue with that in our current society, but voluntary financing of creative works could still be more economically efficient that the existing copyright regime.