Belly previously said:

The purpose of this thread is to discuss book reading in general and sharing your reads but mainly is about an idea that have been running through my head.

Pay Per Chapter Books

Pay per chapter books would be a kind of book where reader only pay for the topic of interest just like you do now for music purchases online.

I'm going to talk about it from a Computer science stand-point.

In computer science books (programming mostly) books tend to include everything under the sun and many times I find my self buying books simply to read a 1/3 of it and the rest becoming useless from day one. Now days the switch to digital reading(kindle & others ereaders) brings in the option for such an idea to be a reality.

The benefits

1. The reader: The benefits to the reader is the pay on demand which is beneficial since you don't pay for useless material and can cover more ground in which ever topic is of interest to you.

2. The publisher: The main benefit to the publisher is that it would allow to know better who their paying customers are and not have to waste time on printing material that maybe useless. The second benefit is that it may actually reduce piracy since i.e. the reader is not forced to US$100.00 for a book and instead pays US$10.00 for the chapter of interest.

What do you think and please share your favorite books on here.

ArturoFeliz previously said:



Interesting idea. Maybe sales would improve too by enticing people who would regularly not buy but would do based on the attractive idea of "not being committed to the whole thing"

Eventually, if it becomes big enough It would also force writers to be engaging and interesting from page one.

Belly previously said:



Yes indeed. In computer science books which are very expensive and where chapter can be written totally separate from each other. The writing style would have to change though. Each chapter must focus on a certain point and not the usual "teasing writing style" to be discussed later in chapter 10 when I'm reading chapter 1.

In computer books is very common for writers to tease on lets say algorithms in a chapter about programming variables.