[eric-hu]

I'm glad you feel the same way I do. I find his opinions witty and incisive, but detracting from the meat of his content.

I feel this way about his payment page too. It's involved to figure out the payment options and decide what to do. I count 10 options among his suggested 5 methods. Compare this to when I'm curious about a movie on Amazon. I see one price with one call to action.

[Tomte]

I'm seeing at least two prices on Amazon for every movie: new and used.

And that's only if I have already searched for a specific format.

So in reality there are at least four prices: DVD and Blu-Ray, both new and used.

And most of the time I'm also seeing Amazon Instant Video. Buy or rent.

That makes at least four prices in the usual case, most of the time six prices.

[eric-hu]

This is true. Despite the number of choices, what Amazon has going for it is that I'm a repeat visitor and their pricing plan is consistent for movies. I've long ago decided what I want. That might change as I, say, upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray or downsize my possessions to go digital, but in general it'll stay the same for months or years. Further, those are mostly commodity formats, so I'm used to deciding if it's worthwhile to spend my money by comparing to other vendors' pricing.

In the author's case, his product and business model are unique. There may be other "pay as you wish" eBooks elsewhere, but none with quite the same mix of fonts, donations and eBooks. Consciously or not, I think the author has made it more difficult for me to consider if and how I'd want to pay him compared with Amazon (or O'Reilly for a closer product).