Ever wonder if an author/publisher would pay you to read their book? Me neither. Author Kevin Kelly did, though. He even considered getting his idea patented, but he decided it would take too much work. According to his work here, the publisher would see a profit off the transaction.
A MODEL FOR PAYING READERS TO READ BOOKS
By Kevin Kelly
June 1, 2012Proposal for a patent: The idea is to pay people to read a book.
Readers would purchase an e-book for a fixed amount, say $5. They would use an e-book reader to read the digital book. The e-book reader would contain software that would track their reading usage – how long it took on average to turn a page; how often they highlighted a passage; how many pages activated at one sitting, etc. Amazon Kindles today already track bookmark usage patterns which they relay back to Amazon on via its wireless Whispernet. Using a database of known reading patterns from verified readers the software would compare a purchaser’s reading behavior to these known reading patterns and establish whether or not a purchaser is really reading the book. If the behavior patterns exceeded the threshold level – say 95% of pages turned at the right speed — then the e-book device would initiate a predetermined payment to the purchaser.
If a reader is given credit for reading the book, then he/she would earn more than they paid for the book. For example, if they paid $5 for the ebook, they would get back $6, thus earning $1 for reading the book. Not only did the book not cost them anything, but they made money reading the book. If they read it.
The full article is on Kevin Kelly’s site.
