Abstract: Revenue generated through electronic book sales (and other transactions, such as rental, sample, leasing, etc.) is allocated among rights holders and other parties based on a ranking of common work distributed in electronic book form or any other form (e.g., paperback, hardcover, audio). As the ranking changes, the revenue allocated to the rights holder changes. The changes may be made in real-time as revenue and metric data is collected.

Abstract: Digital items may be referred, lent, or resold via a computing architecture that supports a secondary market for such items, as well as the economic models to support the secondary market. In one scenario, a lender may lend a digital item to another person, and if that person purchases the digital item following a trial period, the lender is given a referral fee. In another scenario, rights holders of one digital item are paid a referral fee for any sales of other digital items that arise due to purchasers acting on a reference contained in the digital item.