[NatCh]

Hey, yvanletterrible,

I'm afraid you've asked questions that can't really be answered, but maybe the whys might be something of an answer.

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

What is the percentage value of an ebook that goes to the rightful author or succession compared to that of an e-leech company (sorry I just don't like most of them) ?

This depends on the contract the author got from the publisher. It would mostly be arranged either so the author gets a lump sum and no royalties, or so that they get (probably) a lump sum plus a percentage of sales (I imagine there's some variance in what "percentage of sales" actually means, too).

In the former case, the author gets his X dollars and goes about his merry way. If the book bombs or skyrockets, it doesn't make a difference to him. I think this sort of contract goes to new authors who don't have the clout to get better deals, i.e. they make almost nothing from the book. Obviously it doesn't matter financially to this author how or even if his book sells to the public.

The second case, the royalty percentage is what it is. The only finacial difference from a p-sale versus an e-sale is if there is a price difference between the two.

Oh, yeah, they also can set up a fixed royalty rather than a percentage. For example, the author gets $1.75 per sale, rather than 13% of each sale. For this scenerio, the author gets his $1.75 regardless of how the book is sold.

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

And how many copies of books are pirated from e-book sales compared to those digitized from paper books ?
This one could greatly balance in the "justification" of DRM.

I don't think there's any way to know that one short of truth-drugging every person on the planet (the dead ones too!) and asking them the question, or by direct devine revelation (and somehow, I think He's got better things to do ). I'm sure there are estimates, though I don't recall seeing any right off-hand, but those estimates would essentially be SWAGs (that's an engineering term meaning "silly wild, um, guesses" -- the silly is optional).

That being said, I see what you're getting at, and I think you're probably correct that they're fairly comparable, even if we'll never know. Actually, there are probably more scan/OCRed ones simply because there are so few e-texts compared to p-texts.