Creative payment: the digital tip jar

How many times have you contributed to an author, artist or musician's coffers when you've had the (legitimate) alternative of downloading for free? I'm guilty of neglecting the digital tip jar myself, I'll download a book (usually a pdf) because it's free (might as well) but I'll wait and see if it was any good before I part with any money (after all, anyone can supply any quality of writing for free as a pdf). A couple of years later I haven't got round to reading it, or if I have I can't remember where it came from so whether or not I rated it, the author hasn't got anything from me. It would take a more dedicated person than me to go back and pay in a separate transaction from downloading the book (album, etc) anyway. Given all this, I can hardly complain at the lack of funds flowing through my own tip jar (the biscuit and biro fund, accessible where you can download my novel, my SF collection or The Little Book of Northern Women).

For a while, a few years ago, both Wasted Years and The Little Book of Northern Women were for sale on Amazon, and people took a chance and paid real money for them (thank you, if you were one of those adventurous souls). I took them off Amazon because I'm not comfortable with their dominance and, longterm user of open source software that I am (and having now read PostCapitalism by Paul Mason I appreciate that I'm apparently prefiguring the transition to a post-capitalist society) it made more sense somehow to make them freely available under a Creative Commons licence and ask people to chip in if they'd enjoyed it, then do the same for everything else I wanted to get out there. Think of it a little like crowdfunding: everyone who contributes only pays a small amount they'll hardly notice, but it adds up across all the contributors so that the author, musicians or whoever (in this case me, and OneMonkey who does most of the proofreading, formatting etc and designed the cover for Cracks in the Foundations) gets a reasonable amount of money. The trouble is, as mentioned earlier, not that many people do it (even me).

I completely get that if you only have a small amount of money to spend on books I can't compete with the new Stephen King or JK Rowling, just like some local band with their first album out can't compete with Iron Maiden. I also understand that even with good intentions (like me) people don't go back to donate once they've read the book or listened to the album. And I'd rather know loads of people were reading my stuff (and, I hope, enjoying it) than put off the potential readers that can't afford to take a chance. But digital tip jars don't seem to be the answer. Given that all writers, artists and musicians need to eat even if they're not household names, does anyone know how we make this kind of deal work?