[Zonulet]

No, this is just my point. Among people on message boards, for whom copyright is oppression and piracy is second nature, paying for media is a voluntary donation. For the average person in the world I am selling my books to, that is not yet the case. They are in the habit of getting stuff the legit way – it's not worth dealing with something a bit complicated and icky when ebooks are pretty good value for money anyway.

Surely this is exactly why the Emergency Library has had such a rapturous reception! Because it's exactly what I described – an (apparently) legit, feel-good, well-publicised, reasonably simple way to get any book you want for free. That has not existed before. Otherwise why would anyone care?

[kethinov]

I don't think it's true that the existing pay per copy regime is actually forcing anybody to pay who doesn't want to. Everyone knows how to get media for free. The choice not to is already mostly an expression of voluntary donation.

As such, I think if every such work was instantly converted to a pay what you want model with a default asking price set, below which you're presented with a bunch of ads and an annoying email harvesting form or something, the majority of people would still pay the default price out of a combined desire to avoid annoying ads, avoid annoying forms, and to support the author.

Some would pay more if given the option to increase the amount paid in exchange for relatively trivial perks. Even I—defender of piracy extraordinaire—have voluntarily paid for luxury tiers for freemium content on numerous occasions.