Authorial remuneration in transition:

Amazon’s letter to writers who publish through its Kindle Select program explained that the formula was changing because of a concern “that paying the same for all books regardless of length may not provide a strong enough alignment between the interests of authors and readers.” Amazon is being clever: While the authors of big, long, and important books felt that they were shortchanged by a pay-by-the-borrow formula, they probably didn’t expect that Amazon would take their proposal a step further. Instead of paying the most ambitious, long-winded authors for each page written, Amazon will pay them for each page read.

A lot of people are going to be rushing to moral-political judgment about this (whatever the precise technical details of their arguments — which scarcely matter). Denunciation, predictably, will be institutionally selected for. Inconsequentiality will be total.

There’s an industrial revolution taking place, now at the level of culture. The most sensible judgment at this stage would be restricted to: this is interesting.

(‘Faster please’ is also an endorsed response here.)