People Would Rather Pay Than Donate

It does seem folks will shell out for print, or even an e-book, but if it's just some story on a website with a donation button, not so readily.

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Mindful, yes, people would rather pay than donate. It's human nature.
To me a book is something you can read offline if you want.
If you can get it in a downloadable format, I would consider it a book.
Which I know is work, so if you do that, you might as well sell it on a free site like smashwords, if not Amazon.
But you bring up a good point and I will discuss it in a post (with a link to your site)