Macropayments: why I don’t have a tipjar

My latest Locus Magazine column is live: “Macropayments” explains why I don’t have a tipjar: Two columns back, in “Think Like a Dandelion,” I talked about the reproductive strategies employed in species where reproduction is cheap, like dandelions. Unlike humans, dandelions don’t worry about the disposition of each of their children — they only want to be sure that every opportunity for success is fulfilled, that every crack in every sidewalk has a dandelion growing out of it. It’s a damned successful strategy, for dandelions at least. You’d be hard pressed to find a lawn, no matter how carefully tended and how thoroughly poisoned, that doesn’t have a dandelion or two sprouting on it. To concretize the metaphor: I don’t care about making sure that everyone who gets a copy of my books pays me for them — what I care about is ensuring that the everyone who would pay me decent money for a book has the opportunity to do so. I don’t want t...