Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Authors could do this now. There's nothing preventing them from doing so.
The issue is that publishers invest their own money and resources into preparing an e-book, and would probably be less willing to do so if you cut their profit margin in half. Particularly considering how many books lose money anyway.
And if the book is ready for sale - like Prestone Antifreeze - you don't need a publisher at all, just a retailer.
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How much of that "loss" is a matter of accounting? If you create an ebook
you don't have a printing run and you have no added cost or potential loss
from not selling all, or enough of, the books printed. Even if only a few
thousand ebooks are sold, there are profits and no losses, for each sale.
Perhaps not the profits a publishing house wants or not accrued as quickly
as their limited attention span can tolerate, but the potential for any ebook
to catch on and the ability to supply any demand at any time, without additional
expense, certainly demonstrates an advantage for ebook production over pbook.
How and to what extent that benefits the author might depend on what the
publisher is providing him.
Authors appear to need help in creating their books "ebooks" as well as
"pbooks", but perhaps not so much from a publishing house anymore.
Anyone can prepare an ebook on their home computer, how good the story
is might be a problem, but the ebook file created can be every bit as good
as what the publishing house would produce. The proofreading and editing
is no longer the sole province of the publishing houses.
Luck;
Ken