Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
This innovation amounts to a compromise between ethical publishing and the old fashioned vanity press, shifting risk from publishers to authors.
It would be wonderful for a corrupt politician, relatively safe now that newspaper investigative staff have been hollowed out, but worried about a book author whose investigation needs advance funding.
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I'm afraid I see no ethical problem at all. Amazon has set the new benchmark. 70% royalties to self-published authors who take responsibility for all aspects at one end of the spectrum. At the other its own imprints who offer services comparable to traditional publishers at a lower rate but still much more than that usually offered by the Big 5. No ethical problems at all. Those who want to go the Big 5 way have that option. Those who aren't wanted by the Big 5 or those who choose not to go with them have the option of self-publishing and keeping all of the Royalties. If they are wanted by Amazon imprints or smaller innovative traditional publishers they have the option to take a lesser royalty in return for the support and services offered, should they judge it good value and in their best interests.
Your second point depends very much on your personal political views. I'm trying to think of an actual book requiring extensive research that itself brought a corrupt politician down, but the examples I consider all seem to have been written well after the event. In these days of wikileaks and the internet, politicians have arguable never been subject to greater scrutiny. Good investigative journalists in the MSM are nice, but we are hardly reliant on them, let alone on large publishers.