Quote:
Originally Posted by Charbax
You are extremely mistaken if you think that Web 2.0 cannot provide us with that filtering of quality.
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It probably can. But who's volunteering for the slush-pile diving? I'm sure someone will, eventually. Get back to me when the community filtering is up and running... What? You say it'll be a while?
That's nice, I'll stick with my favorite publishers for the moment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charbax
I much prefer my filter be provided by a web 2.0 tool taking advantage of the wisdom of all online users, rather then the filter being by some filthy rich publisher from his golf cart smoking his cigars.
Publishers only care about profit. They turn good books into commercial crap. They need to completely disappear, be exterminated.
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Of course you are free to have whatever preference you like. But... "Filthy rich publisher from his golf cart smoking his cigars" ???
Which one would that be? Are we talking the publisher of Baen Books? First Jim Baen (RIP), now Toni Weisskopf. Filthy rich
certainly ain't the right picture here. Although they're the 2nd largest publisher of SF/Fantasy in the US (after Tor), they're not a giant company -- we're talking fewer than 10 full-time employees. The only people "getting rich" are the few authors who consistently produce best-sellers. And even they are only getting
modestly rich.
Filthy rich requires Steven King- or Rowling-like sales.
Or did you mean William Schafer of Subterranean Books? His company produces beautiful limited editions of SF and Fantasy titles. And I'm pretty sure that no one is getting rich over there, either.
Sounds to me more like
you're doing the smoking, and I'm beginning to wonder what's in those cigars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charbax
When I download an ebook, I want 100% OF THE PROFITS going in the pocket of the author. Publishers taking 75% of my ebook money or tax dollars for free ebook downloads intended to the author, publishers need to die.
There is absolutely nothing that a publisher can do which Google Books and other free ebook repositories cannot do. Web 2.0 is the new publisher, and THAT ONE SHALL NOT be controlled by any filthy publishing corporation. Go away.
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The above intemperate language leads me to believe that you are not entirely in touch with the realities of publishing. Certainly, some publishing houses are subsidiaries of large corporations. Tor, for example, is a subsidiary of the Holtzbrink conglomerate. Even there, however, the folks at Tor (many of whom I've met in person, btw) are good folks who are out to produce a quality product. They certainly aren't "filthy rich publishers" who "care only about profit." (Note: I can't judge the folks up at the top of Holtzbrink -- I have no direct experience there.)
Nor does the publisher get 75% of your book-buying $$. In practice, the retailer takes 50%+. The distributor takes another cut that ranges from 20% to 50%. So 75% of the money is gone before the
publisher sees the first dime. What you should really be getting excited about is that the Web can remove at least one and sometimes two layers of middlemen. And THAT change gives us (the customers) a 2x to 4x improvement in efficiency. It's not unreasonable for us to expect to split that efficiency improvement between customers, publisher/editors, and authors -- yielding better prices for the customers, higher profits for the publishers
and more income for the authors (a win-win-win situation!). I note that your hypothetical Web 2.0 site (that doesn't exist yet!) gets at most another factor of 2 or 3 in financial efficiency. This is not trivial. But it's also no larger an improvement than just dropping the middlemen.
As for "There is absolutely nothing that a publisher can do which Google Books and other free ebook repositories cannot do.", well...
What about the publicity, marketing, and other professional services provided by (successful) publishers? How about the fact that publishers take on a significant financial risk by paying authors an advance against future royalties -- which the author
DOES NOT have to pay back if sales do not materialize. Are you suggesting that the authors should take on that risk too?
Consider, as an object lesson, the fact that Lois McMaster Bujold (whose books routinely make the NYT best-sellers list) switched publishers from Baen to EOS because EOS could afford to give substantially larger advances. Everyone involved agrees that the eventual return from her books would be about the same when the dust settled. Baen might even pay more over time, because they 'get' the eBook market and EOS doesn't. But the financial certainty of a big advance is awfully hard for an author to pass up -- even when they expect that the deal with the smaller advance would (probably) be a financial winner over the long haul. I suspect that you'll find most (although perhaps not all) successful authors would be quite reluctant to give up the certainty of advances for the possibility of better returns. In your "Web 2.0" market, which participant is going to assume the risk of fronting the advance money? And how are they going to be compensated for that risk?
If you are thinking in terms of "filthy publishing corporations," you're probably failing to see the full complexity of the issues. So, I must respectfully decline to "go away." Instead, I'll finish by saying "I suspect your facts are... um... uncoordinated."
If you'd like to engage in reasoned conversation on the subject, feel free to do so. Bringing up real examples, actual data (or at least substantiated anecdote) would help bring light to the issues rather than just heat.
Xenophon