Patent ID: 8589777

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for determining the cost of and producing a user-defined content object comprising: defining said content object in accordance with user selection and arrangement of a plurality of content entities for said content object, wherein the content object is a digital object within the computer in the form of one of a book, a collection of images, an album, a video and a multimedia object, and the content entities each include content comprising digital data, are stored within a data repository as a plurality of individually accessible file objects, and are selectively associated with an actual content count representing the quantity of content within that content entity; and generating a price for the user to produce the user-defined content object, wherein said price is one of an actual price and an estimated price selected based on a parameter setting and said price generation includes: generating an estimated content count for the selected content entities that represents an estimated quantity of content within the content object, wherein the digital data within the selected content entities are utilized to determine the estimated content count representing the estimated quantity of content within the content object, and generating from the estimated content count the estimated price to serve as the price for the user to produce the user-defined content object with the selected content entities in response to said parameter setting indicating the estimated price, wherein the estimated price is determined based on a price per unit of content, and wherein the unit of content represents a predetermined quantity of content and the estimated content count indicates an estimated quantity of said units of content for the selected content entities; and generating the actual price to serve as the price for the user to produce the user-defined content object from the actual content counts of the selected content entities in response to said parameter setting indicating the actual price.