Quote:
Originally Posted by Calenorn
You know, those publishers already have a lot of titles "tied down" that I would gladly pay for, but they're not bringing them out as e-books. I'm talking about the back catalog titles of many authors. And so my money stays in my pocket. That being the case I fail to see why the publishers are so eager to tie down even MORE titles. They certainly will not make any money from a product they never offer for sale.
So am I missing something here?  Or are publishers just irrational? |
From talking with a few people I know who work in trad publishing the reason they are going this direction is sort of as an investment.
They will try to lock up more books from authors they sign but at much lower costs. So, where they might have bought 3 books from a promising author they will now try to buy maybe 5-6 but at lower price than if they had to buy them after a sucessful trilogy.
So where a first time author sells a very good trilogy for maybe $10-$15k in advance and gets 15% of HC sales and 7% of paperback sales they might only pay a $2-$5K advances for each book after that and maybe at reduced royalty rates.
The idea is that with some of these authors they might become popular and they have them under contract at terribly low costs. The author is legally bound to provide those books at the rates agreed to so the publisher is likely to get the books. So, even if the publisher holds the books and doesn't publish them they have the rights to them that they can sell or that they can hold on to and publish later.
Suppose the writer writes the 5 books contacted for and moves on to another publisher because of the poor contract. They move on and become even more popular. Now the original publisher can publish and release these books or the back catalog during the height of their popularity.
In any case it is the publishers trying to lock in potentially top selling authors at low rates.