At the Paper Cuts blog there is a piece called E-Reading Emerson.
In the comments section one person had a detailed comment with several ideas in it. One of which was:
Amazon could easily put a little check box asking whether readers purchasing second hand books wish to pay the author a royalty, which in most cases amount to small change, but make a difference in that the actual number of people who buy the book are tabulated to the publisher.
I think this is an interesting idea that Amazon might want to pursue. But this got me thinking that maybe libraries should do this. What if libraries had a way that readers could tip authors of books they checked out at the library? If libraries created an additional stream of revenue for authors then authors might do more to promote and work with libraries.
Other countries already have this formalized as a public lending right.
If it is not practical to send money to individual authors it might be possible to use “tipped” funds to buy more books by the authors as a way to support them.
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