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Originally Posted by neilmarr
Hya SensualPoet: Don't be too mislead by Amazon's 'generosity'. That 30% sales commission applies only in the US, UK and Eire and last week extended to Canada. There's a whole wide world out there placing sales on which Amazon/Kindle still takes 65%.
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Nope, I hear ya: 30% is a sales commission and that's what I was commenting on. That means the publisher takes 70% (less delivery fee) and then divides that up to cover costs, author royalties, etc.
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Originally Posted by neilmarr
The new eBook stores are now exceeding even the penal discounts and sales commissions once demanded by brick and mortar bookshops that at least had titles on real shelves, staff to advise browsers and were self-promoting. No buyer advice at the ebook stores (apart from what publishers, authors and readers supply themselves) and certainly no promotion, unless it's for the store itself.
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I can't believe the 30% Amazon is asking is more than the cost to service a slew of independent bookstores around the world with real printed copies distributed to real bricks and mortar operations (or through jobbers and other middle men taking even more for regional distribution).
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Originally Posted by neilmarr
Sadly, they have everyone over a barrel. We have no choice but to play the game by their rules.
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Which is why I stated a hope for Kobo, B&N and others to strengthen their offerings and reach out to smaller publishers. Not many smaller publishers are as far-sighted as yourself, embracing e-books and e-book distribution.
I have had direct discussions with two smaller Canadian publishers and they moan about the cost of making an e-book and would rather stick to paper only. This view was highlighted by the small press publisher of this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize: he wanted to stick to hand fed letter-press copies of the winner meaning, at best, a several hundred copies could be made in time for the holiday selling season. Thankfully, Kobo stepped in and offered to make an ebook edition available (of all the short-list titles) and another larger publisher printed a paper edition allowing thousands of copies to make it to the book shops. Without Kobo and the other publisher, literally only handfuls of readers would have had access to the winner in 2010. Happily, it all ended well but it underscores the lack of vision.