Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
That's pretty much the role the publishers already play. Getting a publisher is, in effect, hiring editors, cover artists, marketers, advertisers and the like.
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But consider the price: In exchange for the editing, artistic, and marketing services -- all pretty much a one-time thing -- the author surrenders his rights to the book,
and 80% or more of the book's revenue, for years -- often for the profitable lifetime of the book.
When authors don't have any other way of getting those books on to the table at the front of the bookstore, or getting them printed at all, for that matter, they don't have much of a choice with it. But when that
isn't an issue anymore, then those authors are going to wonder why they're paying a publisher so much for services they can obtain a la carte for a much cheaper price -- which then enables them to sell their book for a lower price, which induces more people to buy that book, which increases their total sales, which increases the profits that go into their pocket.
People want to read the new J. Bigname Author book, not the new Random House book. They couldn't care less who the publisher is. That's why, if and when ebooks become the dominant form of publishing, the publishers won't
dare tick off Amazon: people will buy that book by J. Bigname Author from Amazon no matter who publishes it, and Amazon can provide the same services (and, given their diversification and their much leaner corporate structure, probably at a significantly lower price) that the publishers provide today. If push comes to shove, some authors will stay with their publishers (especially those contractually obligated to do so) -- but some will decide that if it comes down to having Amazon as a publisher or one or more of the Cabal 6 as a bookstore, they'd rather go with the famous bookstore, and with the money, and leave their former publisher in the lurch. Given how heavily the publishers depend on those big names -- and the extent to which they've dried up their own well of up-and-coming authors -- it wouldn't take very many author defections to badly, even fatally, cripple a publisher.
Also, publishers have laid off a
lot of employees over the past decade or so. Some of those people have started their own companies, some are in publishing-related fields, and some are busing tables. The existing publishers don't have a lock on the talent, either; if Amazon wants to get serious about publishing, they've got all those former employees of big houses to hire and cubic dollars to hire them with; they could set up a full-scale publishing operation in a matter of months.
Publishers keep trying to force the market to sustain the business model they found profitable in the past. Amazon looks at current conditions and figures out how to profit from them. Right now, they own the digital storefront, and if the publishers' "Big 6" cabal threatens that storefront, those publishers may find themselves with a Bigger 7th on their hands, lean, hungry, and ready to eat their lunch. I don't think they dare risk having that happen.