D Consortium as Book / App Publisher... ?

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 22 December 2015 at 16:16:53 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Tuesday, 22 December 2015 at 16:10:23 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> It is all beyond idiotic: it is amazing how long antiquated 
>> ideas stick around, only because people cannot imagine 
>> anything else.
>
> What you're describing sounds basically like a magazine... paid 
> freelance authors contributing articles.

Heh, never thought of that analogy. :)  I can see why you might 
think that, because a blog is continually produced by many 
writers, like a weekly magazine, as opposed to a single end 
product written by one person over a year or two, like a book.  
There is some similarity to magazines, though bloggers wouldn't 
be forced to any schedule, even weekly.

As for the paid freelancer aspect, magazines pay by the piece and 
I think they usually keep the copyright, because they had that 
bargaining power.  With paid blogs, you'd do revenue-sharing, 
with the writer getting 70%+ of the money their posts garnered, 
and keeping their copyright, similar to the deal LeanPub makes.  
There's just too much competition for writers these days for them 
to get much less than that.

But the biggest difference is that online is a much more dynamic 
format, with all kinds of innovations to come, with everything 
from tipping extra for articles you like, as you might for good 
service at a restaurant, to building recommendation systems to 
find the best customized selection of posts for _you_ to read.

If you'd have told me at the inception of the Web 25 years ago 
that most writers would still make money primarily through _print 
books_ in 2015, I'd have said you're nuts.  And yet, sadly, 
that's where we are today.