Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Like this?
similar publisher drops backlist site:.mobileread.com
Nothing relevant comes up. And if it did, then we'd have to see how much evidence there is for what sounds to me an implausible claim. Is this coming from true industry insiders, or disgruntled authors? How would you measure the similarity of two books claimed to be such? I think that with fiction, absent plagarism, and absent strong evidence from industry insiders, you can't.
I did, while saying I have no evidence it has actually happenned even in a realm where it is actually possible to measure whether two books are similar.
I think that the nefarious reason you give is why books go out of print is mistaken -- except with textbooks, where they obviously do quickly go out of print.
OK. Your position then is that author's should be able to sell their rights outright with one exception that you don't find onerous but that you think is important to publishers. My postion is that the author should be able to sell all the rights.
We both agree that publishers make money by taking books off the market even though they are still profitable. I think they just do this with textbooks. You think they do this with novels (and maybe textbooks too -- I don't know.)
You proposal will significantly reduce the incomes of the authors listed on title pages of textbooks, because it destroys the model when there are frequent new editions. Knowing that the author will, in five years, undercut the publisher price, the textbook publishers may refuse to credit authors, significantly reducing their incomes. As for novelists, it won't make much difference to their average incomes one way or the other. Publishers will just keep novels in print longer that probably aren't earning out advances anyway.
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1 You are entitled to your opinion regarding fiction but I have formed this opinion after reading articles by disgruntled authors and people who have worked in publishing over a number of years.
2. A few googles over a couple of hours hardly counts as research in my view.
3. As regards textbooks, I do not know if publishers do not reissue textbooks because they have a new textbook they want to push but would not be surprised if it happens.
4. How would my proposal reduce textbook author's income? If a publisher brings out a new edition of a textbook then the book is still in print, unless it contains no text from the original edition. If that is the case then it is a new and different book even if it has the same title. In any case details would have to be worked out. I have just thrown out out a bare bones idea of my thinking.
5. You seem to be taking this discussion a little personally. Have you written a textbook?