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Originally Posted by mdibella
Would you anticipate this situation changing with the increasing popularity of ebooks?...
Which then begs the issue of, how much money should that writer be paid for his/her work?...
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Certainly the rise of electronic publishing will change all the equations. Writers will discover alternatives to the services provided by publishers, and some will strike out on their own... publishers will see areas where their infrastructure costs will be lower, and will strive to add as much of that saving as possible to profits, but must still show writers that they are cost-effective.
In the end, pubs and authors will see rates changing... pubs will have to change, as they see more and more authors selling on their own and bypassing them... and authors will have to decide whether cutting out the pub is worth the extra work they have to do for themselves (prep, marketing, transactions, etc).
With this change, new models of publishing and profit-making will likely arise to take advantage of the new medium... there will probably be a lot of "churn" in the coming years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdibella
My original concern was with the authors whose work seems to be quite popular, but they stop writing because they just can't afford to keep doing it. That strikes me as a system that is broken, somehow.
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Not broken at all. Part of a writer's contract with a publisher may be to grant the rights for a set of characters to that publisher. But that was simply a tool they used to get the contract, and they could just as easily turned down a contract with that stipulation. It is not required legally, and authors with more "pull" can and do often pass on that clause.
As the "system" changes, "average Joe" authors may find themselves more free to turn down such contracts in the future, or if they cannot get a satisfactory contract for their book, to publish themselves.