Quote:
Originally Posted by Mambo
You get 0.45 for a book and you say that downloaders hurt you? Man, do you know what are you talking about? How long it takes to recognize your actual enemy?
At least you should get 50% in a healthy world order. A downloader may have taken 0.45 from you but your publisher steals 3.3 per copy. (If there is book for 7.5 that is 6%, which I doubt if you can get a good book for that much.)
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Heartily agreed. In the current system, the author arguably does not get a fair share. Like I've posted before, more than half of the cover price goes to the book store.
So the publisher doesn't
steal 3.3 per copy, it gets
compensation for financial risk.
If your book sells 1M copies, you can negotiate quite a different contract with your publisher for your next book. The publisher will be open to this negotiation, because their risk is lower, too.
The major fallacy in the reasoning I see here is that people think it's unfair that a publisher gets a bigger cut than the author, and therefore it's "just" to make sure
neither gets a dime. This does not help the "poor oppressed authors" in any way.
Remember that an author has signed a contract with the publisher, which they were free to negotiate about, or simply not sign. An author feeling that a publisher doesn't really add value could instead invest in a bunch of post-it notes with his email address on it, and spend a day or two sticking these to the notice boards of all shops, universities, and wherever his potential audience was likely going to see them, with the offer of sending them a xeroxed, stapled copy of their manuscript in exchange for two dollars in an envelope.
An alternative for the author would be to self-publish. It takes reading a few books and some research, and he would be all set.