Quote:
Originally Posted by Connallmac
No, I did get that point, I just tend to disagree with it, eventually if you push a manufacturer hard enough on price, after they've cut everything else back to the bare minimums, they are going to have to cut the quality. Whether it's Diet Coke or books or widgets. I found it to be a very poor and ill thought out analogy.
I think the big thing to take away from this whole fight is wondering why the authors continue to do business with the Big 5 PH at all? It seems to me that they have done little to help authors and certainly quite a bit to make them worse off.
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Publishers do provide a service. Most of them do a good job editing, provide a decent cover, provide feedback and a support mechanism. How much is that worth? Depends on the author and the editor. Some publishers are stepping up more often with advertising and they are learning to more prominently take advantage of putting their publishing mark where it can be noticed--that way for readers who do not want self-published, it becomes a branding value.
Publishers also handle formatting and uploading to several sites. Trust me, that can be a pain in the neck. There are more and more sites vying for our attention every day--subscription services, library uploading services, places like netgalley. Netgalley charges 300 dollars per book to be listed there. The publisher covers that if they choose to market a book there. Bookbub, an advertiser that actually has a large buying audience can charge 1000 dollars per ad. A publisher pays that if you have one.
There are some advantages and that cannot be overlooked. Each book--not just each author--has to have all those considerations weighed. The editor is doing the same thing on their end. They don't automatically take every book out of an author and publish it.
Publishing a book is a rather large effort in both time and money at some point. Thankfully there are multiple ways to achieve it, but the trad route is still a very viable and useful publishing mechanism for a lot of authors.