Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Not at all. Certainly in the brave new world of publishing as currently implemented by Amazon, the authors stand to gain much more income mostly due to eliminating the dead weight of the publisher-o-saurus.
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If you mean "no more publishers," then keep in mind that it will be Amazon which will end up dictating terms to the authors -- including, I'm sure, the right to lower a self-publishing author's price at will.
"No publishers" also means no advances, no free editing services, no industry connections, no free marketing....
We've seen a few people who got big from self-publishing sign with traditional publishers (John Locke, Amanda Hocking). We'll see if that works for them, but at least at the moment they think the "dinosaur dead weight" is actually worthwhile.
We
haven't seen a lot of indie musicians routinely top the charts without the music labels, which are further along in the disintermediation process than books. hmmmmm
It also means that books which require resources will be fewer in number. Self-publishing works fairly well for fiction and memoirs, not so well if you need to spend 6 weeks in Europe checking historical records.