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In reply to the discussion: Amazon to Cut E-Book Prices, Shaking Rivals (making Amazon a Monopoly) [View all]WeekendWarrior
(1,437 posts)monopoly. Publishers can easily open their own online bookstores and offer Amazon competition. There's nothing stopping them from doing that. And there are several other online bookstores out there. Amazon's popularity doesn't make them a monopoly. And Amazon is popular because they offer outstanding customer service.
But what I really have to take issue with is this statement, which shows your complete lack of knowledge about the publishing industry:
Personally, I think it's perfectly fair that the authors get less from the publisher, because the publisher pays for editing, design, marketing, etc, where a self published author would either have to do without those things, or pay for those services with his or her own money and time.
First, yes, publishers DO pay for these things. But the cost of such things is actually minimal. The self-published authors I speak of also pay for these things and it costs them a mere fraction of their sales and is a FIXED cost. Once the editing is done, it's done. Once the cover is designed, it's done. Publishers (and authors) pay no additional money for these things.
As for marketing, there was a time when publishers did a lot of it. Nowadays the marketing scheme with the publishers my friends and I have dealt with (and I'm talking Big 6) usually amounts to telling the author to hit the blogs and the social networks and talk up their book. The publicity department sends out advance reading copies to reviewers, who are now usually easily accessible bloggers, because newspapers review books less and less. While a lot of marketing dollars may be pumped into an author who is already a bestseller or the one or two books that the publisher decides to push, most of the time the author is left on his own.
That's a fact. And any author will tell you this.
Yet you think authors should get LESS than the publisher? You think authors should only get 17.5% of ebook sales? It's even LESS for hardcovers and mass market paperbacks (10% and below in most cases). Publishers are taking a HUGE cut of sales for a contribution to the project that basically amounts to minimal fixed costs per book. In their defense, they DO offer advances, but in most cases that's only a few thousand dollars.
Yet, for this, you think they DESERVE that higher cut? You're siding with the middle man against the actual person who sits down and creates a story out of nothing, creates characters out of nothing, builds a world for the reader (you) to get lost in, and works seven days a week for MONTHS, sometimes a year, to write that book?
I can only assume that you're a middle man yourself who has nothing but contempt for creatives, or you simply don't value the person who makes the most significant (arguably the ONLY significant) contribution to the work. What other explanation is there?
There was a time when authors had no choice but to, basically, become SLAVES to the publishing companies because the publishing companies controlled the printing pressand, more importantly, distribution. Do you realize that most authors have day jobs? Yet publishing companies employ hundreds of staffers and pay them living wages, while offering THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEIR BUSINESS POSSIBLE far, far less. Yes, there are a few millionaire authors out there, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
But thanks to Amazon, that's no longer true. Authors who until a couple years ago had to scrape to make a living are now able to make a damn good one, thanks to the Kindle and Amazon's generous royalty structure.
Yet you accuse Amazon of being predatory and give the publishers a pass. You think authors should get the smaller cut because, I assume, you think their contribution to a book is far less important. ????
I truly can't fathom why else you would say such a thing.