According to a substack article I just read, no one reads anymore and that's why authors can't make money. The author's solution? Serial stories, which end up costing more per word than the cost of a full length novel.

Meanwhile, over on Kindle Vella, Amazon's serial story platform, over half of reviewers complain about how reading serial stories is too expensive, they hate using Amazon's token to make micro transactions to read, and they won't read on there again.

The problem isn't readers. Or authors. The problem is the money. Someone needs to bring bitcoin to the world of self publishing. Value 4 Value payments, micro transactions, self-hosted platforms. Authors will make more money without paying out to payment processors or publishing platforms like Amazon, and readers will be able to get a fair price.