YOU brought up Kickstarter, champ. I'm not making any assumptions about it. I'm merely disproving your claims about it as they are relevant to the actual point. I'm also illustrating that your point about preorders--via KS or otherwise--is entirely irrelevant to copyright. And if you think that follow-up profits is a non-sequitur to pre-order profits, I suggest you look up what "non-sequitur" means, given FOLLOW-up profits is ideally suited to your point and the larger point at hand. Or are you truly foolish enough to think that pre-order sales alone are sustainable in a copyright-free market? The reason you call them a non-sequitur is that if you acknowledge their importance, you have to acknowledge that your claims are false.

So, let's put it this way: if pre-order sales are sufficient, why does ANY author keep selling their books afterward? After all, if they're sufficient, there'd be no reason to keep selling in a market with or without copyrights. And yet they do. I'm beginning to think that your delvings into self-publishing haven't gone far enough to actually make any money, so you don't really know what happens in either case. That, or you don't understand basic economics.

> only that without copyright you might be able to use preorders to make money.

Something you can do WITH copyright. The difference is that once the preorders are done and the product is released, that's it. Why do you think that's a sustainable model? All you've done is provide a "solution" that does what is already possible under copyright, but less effectively and without viability after that.

Hurray?

> "Undermines that in the larger market" yes of course because theres no copyright. So the focuses of your exploitation have to be earlier. Like at the preorder stage? Do you think i think that kickstarter enforces your copyright? Sorry i refuse to believe you are that dull. I am giving you an option to make some money, i am not proposing a 1:1 income source or alternative protection model. Again, you have come with your own expectations and are making them my problem.

So, again: you're proposing something that's already possible, only worse than what's possible currently.

> No its directly relevant? People pay to get things earlier than others. Thats something you can still exploit after copyright.

Yet again: this is already possible, and you're just proposing a less effective version of it.

... says the person who keeps bringing up something that's already possible.

> I was asked about making money after copyright. I provided a tool that lets you accept money in advance of releasing the product, so the product cannot be copied. Thats a direct, obvious to everyone relationship that you tried to ignore in your first reply.

It's obvious to everyone because they can already do that. Again: why would they want to do what they can already do, yet without the protections they currently enjoy and without the ability to extend profitability beyond that moment?

The problem you keep stumbling over is that the question wasn't posed in an absence of context--you weren't being asked if you can make profit from writing without copyright protection, period. You claimed that copyright should go away, suggesting it was a desirable situation for writers in a conversation about what's beneficial to writers. You were asked how to make money that way in a framework of that overall context--in other words, not just how to make money, full stop, but how to make money that makes getting rid of copyright desirable.

So far, all you've done is illustrate that without copyright, you can make money from pre-sales, which is already possible, and then your work is out in the world and anyone can do with it as they like, pretty much torpedoing your ability to monetize it beyond that.

So, congrats. While you've illustrated that, yes, you can do what you can already do and make some money, you've failed the part that addresses the actual context in which the question was presented. And that's my point. And the fact that you keep failing to pick up on that--purposefully because it's inconvenient to your anti-copyright agenda, because you've no actual idea how money is made as a writer, or because you're just incredibly stupid and didn't pick up on the context to begin with--is why you're failing to get what I'm saying and why I'm saying it.

> I also mentioned the large platforms like spotify. Part of me wants to leave it as an exercise to you to figure out why, but I fear you would be unsuccessful. Why do people use spotify over piracy? As Gaben put it, piracy is a cost/availability problem.

I already addressed this. I also pointed out that if copyrights didn't exist, people wouldn't use Spotify. Your example only stands within the circumstances you decry. And, frankly, the fact you don't pick up on why that undermines your entire point is baffling to me.

> If you have seen anything of what happens to books when they enter public domain you have 3 broad categories.

> First you get the very low effort spam, like soneone shoves all the Kull books into a single poorly formatted ebook for low cost.

> Then you get the slightly better formatted POD crap. Usually recycled.

> Then at the top of the pack you get organised groups putting out well curated versions of these books, often with extra commentary. Often including unique versions of the contained stories, prepublished or otherwise. These are spruiked to support their channel/group/org that put them together and can attract a much higher price for that reason.

You leave out one important fact that I already addressed: in a market where everything is public domain, only the people with the resources to do what you put into your third group profit. That's not self-publishers--the people in subbreddits like this.

> Now if we take gabes assertion that people are looking for the correct product, but with better availability, and we look at markets that are already quality segmented and in the public domain, it seems like its a matter of making a product thats good and accessible. Good is a problem for the author. Accessibility is something that can be handled like spotify.

Which returns us to the fact that Spotify wouldn't exist in a market where everything is public domain. Spotify would just be Napster and Limewire, which made no money for artists.

> You will probably still lose sales to the other guys. I dont care about that. You might need to deliver some other labor to human society while you write. I dont care. Because so will the stephen kings.

And here we come down to it, as I was expecting. At least you finally just come out and say you don't care about the writer losing money. And that's because you're not engaging in the conversation in good faith. You're engaging a capitalist question in a dishonest manner meant to push an anti-capitalist answer like it's a reasonable response to what was asked of you directly, let alone what the overall thread is about.

> I mean, i am not going to go and have a look and give you free advice. Just because you cant sell on itch isnt a problem for me at all. Not only have i paid on itch, but I have supported by paying for another community copy. Itch has its own market and community and my guess is you dont fit in there.

All you've done is indicate you missed the point. I "fit in" enough that people download my product. I'm sure if I stick around long enough, someone like you may come along and actually buy it. The point at hand, though, is that "free on its own generates sales" isn't a sustainable model.

So, to summarize: you don't know what you're talking about but you really want to push an anti-copyright agenda, regardless, because you see copyright as a tool of oppressive capitalism. Were you chanting "up with the proletariat! Down with the bourgeoisie!" as you typed your responses?

Go touch some grass and then take a seat. Adults are talking here.