[Sil_liS]

On publishers vs Amazon you say:

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Amazon is probably the single largest book retailer in the world. A significant part of any publisher's revenue will come from sales through Amazon. You don't simply decide to stop working with them. Depending upon who you are, you may not survive without them.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The Agency Model folks actually cut off sales of ebooks for a bit, and Amazon had to capitulate. They were in a position where they could do that for at least some period. But they would hardly want to do without Amazon permanently. It was ultimately a negotiating ploy.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The Agency Model folks cut off ebook sales to Amazon, and they were five of the six largest publishers. If Amazon wants to be the dominant force in ebook retailing (and they do), it's a little hard to do that when most of the ebooks you might want to offer are not available to you.

So it's a game of chicken. Amazon may know it's a strategy. They won't know how long the Agency Model folks are willing to withhold product from them. But since the Agency Model folks are still primarily selling print editions, Amazon is still selling those, and ebooks aren't yet critical to their success, they might just be willing to hold back product a long time.

The summary of this would be: publishers can't refuse to sell to Amazon because Amazon is too big. The Agency publishers did the impossible but only for a little while, and only with ebooks since they don't care about ebooks anyway. Amazon, clearly afraid that the publishers might keep this indefinitely caved in.

This doesn't make sense. You said that Amazon is responsible for a "significant part of any publisher's revenue". If they were playing a game of chicken, Amazon wasn't trying very hard, since they could just refuse to sell the pbooks if they can't sell the ebooks. Another way is to stop giving pbook discounts, and promote primarily the ebooks and used pbooks.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The hope is the book will "earn out" - sell enough copies to cover costs, make money, and generate additional royalties paid to the author in quarterly statements. Most books don't earn out. The advance is all the author sees.

How is this different from me saying "At the end of the day, in the case of pbooks, the author has an advance *or* royalties (depending on what is higher, and from what I understand, for most authors it is the advance that is higher)."?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If a Carina title doesn't sell, they are out the editorial and production costs (which they try to keep as low as possible.) They are not out the advance, because they don't pay advances. If the book does sell, they must pay royalties, but those royalties will be on copies sold. They'll be crying all the way to the bank.

Royalties are always on copies sold. And you make it sound like they don't want the books to sell.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You wouldn't? How do you know?

Math. If you multiply percentages like x% and y%, you get x*y/10000.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Part of the requirements when they decided to do the Carina line was that it would be profitable "out of the box".

So was it?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You can assume books published electronically by Carina may not be up to the rest of Harlequin's offerings, but that won't make them "bad". Carina won't survive publishing bad books.

Yes, but to the authors it's saying that "you're here because we don't think that you are good enough, but this is your chance to prove yourself"; and to the public it's saying "you get what you pay for".

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

They've been in operation for months now and the plug hasn't been pulled, so I have to assume they are meeting projections.

But that could be market share rather than profit.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Reading slush is soul destroying.

And isn't that true for the buyer as well?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The question is how many folks will spends the time reading first chapters and voting?

Go out into the interwebz and see. It actually bothers people if they can't comment on something.
And you should see how people like to get involved a webcomic. The story gets to a point where the hero has to make a choice and the readers get to vote on the outcome.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm not one of them. I have other uses for the time, and the first chapter may not be a good indicator for the rest of the book.

But if the author and editors see what people like about the first chapter they are more likely to meet expectations.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And if all you see are vampire books and books you already bought, you buy an awful lot of books, or have a very small local bookstore, or both.

Actually it is because I buy books in English in the Netherlands. The books are printed in the UK, and we only get the ones that were selling well. The vampire madness arrived a little later than other places, but there were a couple of months when all new fiction books were about vampires. Then they started to bring books about magic, and now they slowly go in other directions. We don't have zombies yet, but there is always next year.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you are a producer, I sell your goods, and I try to use my position as a dominant seller to extract terms more favorable to me from you, that might well be called "extortion".

I thought that was wholesale price.