Quote:
Originally Posted by TCSimpson
That's the quote from the UK's society of authors.
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I don't see, in your link, evidence for the claim of increasing publisher profits. I do know Hachette did unusually well in 2013, but that's just one data point.
I don't see any evidence that two of the three example big publisher authors mentioned in your link (Evie Wyld and Mal Peet) used to make more than they now do.
I do see evidence concerning what is happening to the incomes of Society of Authors members at the same time that membership is increasingly indie -- the incomes are going down.
Now, I am under the impression that advances have, on average, declined. Here are some of the reasons:
1. People are reading less:
http://publishingperspectives.com/20...ook-sales-why/
2. Near-global mini-depression.
3. Increasing retail bookseller concentration (Barnes & Noble, Amazon) puts pressure on publishers to decrease prices.
4. Competition from no advances, low service, low retail price publishers (Smashwords, Kindle Direct Publishing).
Another factor, probably smaller but essentially unknowable, is that digital distribution makes shoplifting books easier.
Now, if big publisher average profits have increased at the same time as all the above, then that would indeed be of interest. I'm not aware of evidence they have. It would be pretty hard to get because the companies that own the publishers are generally in multiple businesses in multiple countries. (Hachette's owner made money, fairly recently, by selling its stake in Airbus.)
Even if it is true that publisher profits went up as advances declined -- and I have no idea if this did or did not occur -- forcing down book prices would even make it worse.
I wonder how the decline in advances compares in the world of genre fiction, where there is a lot of low-priced indie competition, and more or less serious non-fiction, where there is much less indie competition. Hillary Clinton's memoirs, released last month, reportedly received a near-record US$14 million advance.