Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Compensation for authors should be based on actual sales; not some perceived value.
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I'm not sure how to reconcile this hypercapitalist statement with the known fact that said monkey patronizes socialistic public libraries
Why stop at authors?
Should book editors -- who can be even more important than the author in determining how good the book is -- also have compensation wholly based on a percentage of sales?
Should the pay of professors be 100 percent based on the number of students signing up for their courses?
Should retail clerks, and wait staff, be paid solely based on a percentage of sales that pass through their hands?
Should acquisitions librarian compensation be directly proportional to the number of patrons who borrow the books they select?
Web search indicates that the top leadership of Google and Facebook don't get paid, but Jeff Bezos takes an annual salary, plus $1.6 million for security. Here's a modest proposal. Until he starts giving most of his authors advances, Bezos should be paid just like a Kindle Direct Publishing author -- zero profits to Amazon, zero compensation.
Maybe you are going to say yes to all the above. But it seems pretty harsh to me, especially in the case of low-wage workers such as retail clerks -- and most authors.
Also, as a reader, I believe that if the author doesn't receive an advance, the book is liable to be lousy -- because the publisher has no investment it needs to recoup by making the book as salable as possible. There surely are lots of Kindle Direct Publishing authors who are as good as Hachette authors, but whose books are not, because Amazon has insufficient incentive to improve titles before presenting them to the public.