Paid by the page???

7/2 - I know this violates my one-post-a-week policy, but I have a strong opinion about the following and wanted to document it. This social media thing is beginning to rub off...

A good friend of mine forwarded me an article about a discussion had on a radio talk show in Montreal. The topic was this: should authors be paid by the book or the page? I admit I didn't listen to the broadcast, only read the highlights listed in the article about the broadcast, but I had the impression that this is something Amazon is either planning on doing, or is already implementing.

This is a terrible idea for two reasons:

1) When compared to the concept of buying an album vs. buying a song, which was the argument used, each song is a unique, individual work of art. You can hate 5 out of 10 songs on an album, but that has no impact on the fact that you like the other 5. A book is one unique individual work of art. You can't just read chapters 4, 17, and 32 and have a complete and satisfied experience (anthologies may be the only exception).

2) Art is highly subjective, which means potential fans are highly fickle. You can buy a song (download), listen to the first thirty seconds, and decide you hate it. Nevertheless, you've still purchased the whole song. Transaction complete. If you read the first page of a book without buying the entire book and decide you don't like it, you may be only out a nickel, but I'm out a sale. Also, a book is more likely to grow on you the more you read than a song the more you listen.

I'd love to start a discussion about this one, since this is a website about books and authors. I'm assuming most would agree with me, but we all know that when we assume, the oceans rise, a distant star explodes, and Wal-Mart runs out of cheez-its.