I think this thread is getting a bit sidetracked from what I intended, and that some of you are missing the point of my inquiry.
The problem with greed is that often consumers are greedy too in that they want cheap but high quality books that would put less food on the author's plate than if they just asked for donations directly. 
-Paul Keith
I specifically mentioned that this centralized platform would give
higher royalties to the creator(s) due to leaving out (or rather, minimalizing) the middleman and all the dead-tree publishing costs. It costs less to produce, so you can still charge customers less while paying the author/artist/band more.
I'm not really interested in a platform where anybody can self-publish, but even if they could, it does not guarantee anybody would want to pay for whatever crap somebody puts on there. It's still a business. In order to make money you'd have to provide something of value people are willing to give up their money for. Crappy music and books will not get bought (much) and excellent books and music will. Survival of the fittest.
you're basically trading "paper" book vs. self-published e-book with no guarantee of quality.-Paul Keith
First of all, anybody who thinks that just because a book is published by a big publisher it has a quality guarantee is wrong. It's not hard to find spelling, grammar, or other typesetting errors in books. And that doesn't even go into details of whether the content is high quality, since that's more a matter of opinion. You can also look at other closed systems (like Apple's App/iTune's Store) to see that just because has to pass a "screening test" doesn't mean everybody is going to want it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't buy a book or music just because I see an advertisement that makes it look cool. I generally buy books and music due to word of mouth recommendations or from artists/authors I already know and love.
In my entire life I can only think of one music album I got based on an advertisement and guess why? Because during the advertisement they played the music, so I already knew I liked it (or at last what I heard of it).
But maybe now I'm participating in the digression here. My point of this thread is that the technology we have in this digital age is enough to reduce costs of production to negligible amounts. So why are the traditional rates being charged? I understand why it started that way, since that's what it costs to actually produce the goods and make a good profit. But why are authors and artists still selling themselves short to publishing houses or music labels who take most of the money for themselves while charging customers what is now an exorbitant amount (considering cost of production) for digital media?
Authors/artists would make more, customers would pay less, and the middleman (digital platform) would still make a nice skimming off the top for providing the service of connecting media creators with media consumers.
It's a win/win/win for everybody!
Sure, the traditional music labels and publishing houses are probably greedy and don't want to adapt to the new reality (we have seen that with RIAA and MPAA) but I guess what I'm saying is, how come nobody has come up with a better model and the media creators (authors/music artists/etc.) dumped the greedy guys in favor of what would really get them more money and probably more exposure, since more people would probably be buying the cheaper goods.
Am I just asking too soon, and is it just a matter of time? Or is there something else holding everything back? Why aren't the big-name NYT best-selling authors doing something like this? Especially since they already have the fame to successfully migrate to the new system, bringing their fans along with them.
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