Excellent blog article about the publishing industry by J.A. Konrath:
Quote:
Exploited Writers in an Unfair Industry
exploitation: The act of using another person's labor without offering them an adequate compensation.
Are writers being exploited? I'm talking about writers working for what I call Big Publishing (Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harlequin, Hyperion/Disney, Scholastic, Tyndale, John Wiley & Sons, Thomas Nelson, and others.)
Here are my thoughts.
Back in the pre-ebook days, paper was the dominant way to deliver media. This is worth repeating, because it is very, very important. Paper was the delivery system.
Years ago I explained this delivery system in great detail. In short, the book exists in the mind of the reader. It doesn't matter if it gets there via paper, or e-ink, or audiobook, or a pill that will someday burn the story into your memory. The method of getting the story to the reader is nothing but delivery.
Without anything to deliver, the deliveryman goes broke. We need writers, because they create the book. We need readers, because they consume the book. The deliverymen are middlemen.
The middlemen, pre-ebook, were publishers. If you were a writer who wanted to reach readers, you needed a publisher, because you couldn't get into a bookstore on your own.
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Rest is here:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/0...-industry.html