Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Why self-published authors should side with Hachette
The above makes the blazingly obvious argument that the higher the Big 5 price for a book, the more room indie authors have to charge less and still do reasonably well.
What would really kill indie would be for Amazon to not only drive down Big 5 prices, but also forbid sale of DRM'd books. Then, indie authors would lose not only much of the price incentive, but also those readers who choose indie to avoid DRM.
A weakness of my link is that if Amazon, relatively speaking, wins this negotiation, and a poorer Hachette starts producing lower quality books, that could help indie authors by reducing big publisher competition. But I'm not sure anyone here, other than me, thinks there is significant risk of such a quality decline. And I think it would mostly be seen with non-fiction, due to the higher cost of travel and research.
So indie fiction authors would, on balance, lose big if the Big 5 loses.
|
Indies would not "lose" by a longshot. Would it affect us? Sure. But it will bother the big publishers way more. In truth, the traditional authors will get more of a shaft by this due to their royalties.
As a member of a huge group of indies many of whom sell thousands of ebooks a month, they all want Amazon to win out. The price issue doesn't bother us as much as it does the big dudes. We have all the flexibility in the world, from price and offering standpoints. Case in point,
friend of mine K.C May dropped her 4 book series to 99 cents for a day on Amazon while having it advertised on Bookbub and ENT, it hit no 11 OVERALL in the Amazon store. The next day she had another ad with the price to 2.99, it stayed around 11 to 15. This was this past Friday. After Saturday she raised the price back to 9.99 for the entire series of 4 books and is still selling truck loads.
Most of the successful indies already know that you have to write A LOT, and do so, in order to compete. I don't see the big publishers ever going that route with bundles at that price. In the end, the CONSUMER wins. You might wish to use the reduction of quality argument. I'd say, perhaps not as much as one might think, considering the plethora of freelance editing jobs out there and cover artists.
The article itself? I find parts of it laughable, particularly when she says that freelance editors of indies cater to what the indie wants rather than what is bets for the book. As you can see in the replies, PLENTY of freelance editors took exception to that.
As for DRM, in general, Amazon et al like it to an extent. It helps to lock you in to their hardware.
In the end this is about two big corps swatting at each other for their own best interests. This is business. There is no good or bay guy, simply folks out for their own. Hachette isn't innocent and neither is Amazon. This is not much different than what B&N did last year to S&S but because B&N is a candle to Amazon's flame, there was no real uproar.