Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
You haven't mentioned the life plus 70 years of copyright. The publishers don't need get their investment back the first year it's published. They've got another 100 or more years with no further expenses to offset profit on ebooks. And don't tell me about the cost of the servers and people to run it. They can use the same one they use for payroll and other admin uses. The additional cost per each ebook is nothing. They can easily store all the ebooks they've ever published on a desktop, or more probably on Amazons server business.
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I wanted to speak to this--you're misconstruing how copyright and publishing rights work. Yes, sure,
copyright exists for the life+70 years--but
publishing contracts don't. The typical longest length for a Big 5 publishing contract is
7 years--not, life, not 70 and not life+70. When publishing houses bought books outright, sure--that would work for them, but publishing hasn't worked that way in the last 100 years.
The author and the author's heirs/estate may well benefit from copyright lasting that long--but
the publisher that runs all the risks certainly will not, not without renegotiating its contract with the copyright holder--the author.
The publisher, whether Bantam, Random House, etc., is taking a lot of risk. They put in the time and the money, and the advance--however much it is--the marketing, the editing, cover design, yadda--and then they release it into the wild and pray for the best. If it doesn't earn out in that 7 years, they're out that money, and you can betcha that the author isn't going to extend the duration of the contract out of the goodness of his/her heart. For the publisher to keep the contract, and any rights to those eBooks that you feel will just keep on earning, ad infinitum, they'll have to pay the author yet more dough. Otherwise, they're simply out--and the benefit of whatever work that publisher did, the creation of the eBooks, any marketing, etc., at that point inures solely to the author who now has no obligation to that publisher any longer.
@Timboli: for the record, I'm not a publisher. I
do provide publishing services--print book design/layout, ebook production, cover design and production, etc. That's no secret here, obviously; it's in my sig. We subcontract services through my shop as well--editing and indexing, amongst others, to name a few. I know what book production costs. I know what publishers go through, now, having spent the last decade in this business now directly (rather than my looser affiliations, as a commercial book reviewer, in my last life). I have sympathies now for publishers that I certainly never had a decade ago, because I know all too well what it takes, in blood sweat tears and money, to get a book from concept or even manuscript to printed, ready-for-reading book. I know what it's like to work with authors. Believe me, when I say, there are
easier ways to make money in the world than book publishing.
I'll also say, as a businessperson--the publisher's obligation isn't, really,
to you. Sure, they need to bring good products to the market, so that you'll buy them. But their obligation is to their shareholders, to make a profit. That's their LEGAL and fiduciary obligation. It's no different than if you buy shares in Exxon or an airline or a bank--they owe you a duty of care, and a fiduciary duty to try to make money for you, for the value of your shares.
Now, maybe you don't own any stocks or bonds, and no investments, so that's not something to which you relate, but most people have them in their retirement or pension plan accounts. So, if you have the parent company's shares in your retirement account, what matters most to you? A "fairer" (from your perspective) price on your book? More value on your stock? If you can only have one,
which would you choose?
Hitch