[Timboli]

NOTE - This was written before I saw the other two replies.

An extension to my last post.

I wasn't born yesterday, and I have been buying books for about 5 decades, and interested in all the ins and outs for almost that long.

I have read many reports by authors about publishers, from various sources including biographies. I have even been involved through my wife with getting a book printed and then flogged to stores to sell, and know intimately of others.

Stores from what I know, take a huge cut, something no ebook really needs to pay ... nothing like what Amazon asks for instance.

Deals publishers make with authors have involved lump sums or royalties or both etc.

A publisher more than anything else, is a business, and businesses need to make profits. So the farcical notion that cost of production etc doesn't figure is just ludicrous to the extreme. Publishers get big discounts for big runs or lots of service etc, and have special deals with book shops, but the cost is still not small. It costs more to have a book displayed at a prominent position in a store.

Leaving whatever money the author gets out of a book, you cannot ignore that the publisher is doing everything for their own profit, so that means every cost is counted.