Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Someone should find out what percentage Hachette authors signed.
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What difference does it make? If the author signed for 5% of net or 95% of net, the author knew what was being offered before signing. I don't think authors or their agents are either ignorant or dumb or were forced to sign such contracts, especially in the ebook age of self-publishing.
What would you do with such information? Will it be relevant to any future action you take?
And how would you compare it to Amazon's split without also valuing the services each provides to authors? And how would you assign a value to Hachette's giving the author both print and ebook publication versus what Amazon gives?
The percentage cannot be viewed in isolation if you want to determine its real value. If all you want is a raw number so you can say "see, Amazon likes authors better than Hachette likes authors" you don't need to know the true figure. It is already common knowledge that in certain instances the percentage Amazon pays self-publishers is higher than the royalty percentage Hachette pays its traditionally published authors, so you can scream from the mountaintop now.