Solution to a problem that'll probably evaporate in a few years: website like Patreon, but for published authors/producers.
Visitors pledge a monthly amount (with ability to limit to N months) to any published creator.
Website repeatedly purchases a published item from that producer whenever sufficient funds accumulate, and provides public proof of the purchase to maintain trust.
If physical media was purchased, website operator donates it to a library/charity of their choice.
I learned in industry that there are problems that we can solve and sell those solutions to people who desperately need them, but not for enough money (or not cheaply enough) to justify us actually doing it.
Not just little websites but this often comes up at Real Work too.
I usually numb the pain this causes by moving on to the next problem for which we can actually charge enough to make it worth our while.
Maybe this is why fields need passionate devotees who work for (next to) nothing.
That or, fields need devotees who are alert to prices falling unexpectedly and rush to make, passing on the savings to everyone else.
Such a website e.g., thanks to Stripe and AWS and open ledgers like Dat, could probably run with close to zero recurring overhead, and could net a lot of money for producers and the public for the upfront non-recurring expense (NRE) of just a couple of weeks of full-time coding.
I’d like to pitch this idea to a library and see what interest there is.
