Misunderstanding Micropayments (Scott McCloud) -- "Free content is here to stay, file-sharing is here to stay, and any attempt to completely wipe out either is doomed to failure (as it should be). But that in no way precludes the co-existence of markets based on the desires of willing sellers and willing buyers. To proclaim without a hint of doubt that such a market will never exist for low cost digital content contradicts everything we know about the Web’s inexhaustible capacity for variety and adaptation." (Comments: I think "never" is a strong word. On the other hand, I'm not willing to buy content online right now at the micro level. What I think is being missed is macro payments for electronic material. For example, I know that people were willing to spend $4.95 for WebWord material that I put together. Note that this material was already freely available on WebWord yet people still bought it when I packaged it up and threw a price on it. This leads me to believe that people would rather spend $4.95 for 200 pages of material than $0.02 or $0.03 for a page of content, or even $0.25 for a full blown online comic. My recommendation: Forget micro payments and aim for macro payments. For some reason it seems to make more sense to pay more and get more, than to pay less and get less. Or even more. Consider Nielsen's insanely expensive usability reports. Setting prices is a black art. Both McCloud and Shirky need to look into pricing research. And read more about the psychology of buying. And more. I think I can explain a lot of this pricing stuff, but I would need to write an article. Is anyone willing to pay me to write the article? :-) Thanks for the pointer, Frank.)