Actually, IMO, the better argument is that books are NOT fungible and that certain books would not get written or published in an Amazon-dominated book world. Mike Shatzkin makes this argument
HERE:
Quote:
Sharing media attention with the accounts of Amazon and DoJ recently have been stories about Robert Caro, who wrote The Power Broker about master builder Robert Moses 40 years ago and leveraged that success into a life’s work series of books about Lyndon Johnson. Caro was working on negative cash flow — selling his house and with his family being fed on his wife’s paycheck — until Knopf took over supporting him. If they’re printing 300,000 copies of his next book (which they say they are), that’s probably five million in billing on the first printing, plus ebook revenue, in the immediate offing. They’ll get their money back.
But they had to decide to risk it. Publishers do that every day. Sometimes they don’t get that money back.
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