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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
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But the main thing I took away from the article isn't that books are different than Diet Coke. It's that Hachette (and other publishers) could have protected themselves from Amazon had they chosen to re-distribute the disparate margins (that ebooks offered over their print counterparts) in the form of increased author royalties. Now it's probably too late to do so. And rather than reaping the benefits that a larger, happier (and very likely more prestigious) stable of authors would have provided them, they're going to have to hand over those margins to Amazon ... all because of short-sightedness (which they seem to have in abundance).
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I seriously doubt that the publisher could have protected themselves from Amazon by giving increased author royalties. The fight between Amazon and the various publishers have very little to do with the authors per se. While Amazon does provide authors with more leverage with the publishers (especially the established mid-list authors with good name recognition), the publisher/author relationship is much more complex.
Take a look at how the music industry has changed since iTunes made downloadable music more than just a niche market. When iTunes took off, many people predicted that record companies would go away and artists would deal with their fans directly and keep all that money that the record companies were skimming off the record sales. After all, the cost of a recording studio dropped dramatically and you could just publish directly on iTunes using youTube as a marketing device.
It didn't quite work out that way. The big four are still going strong and there are now thousands of so called independent labels out that. Heck, Atlanta, GA has listings for 79 labels locally. Sure, some artists are purely independent, but most want to make music, not all the grunt work needed to produce an album and market it.
The need for editing and marketing hasn't gone away. It very well may be that the consolidation of the big publishing companies reverses and we see a proliferation of smaller, more narrowly focused publishing companies. The demand for dead tree books isn't going to go away any time in the near future. While I'm sure there will be purely independent writers who make a good living, I think they will be the exception to the rule rather than the rule (much like the authors who become wealthy are the exception rather than the rule).