Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
This isn't true in paper formats. (Hardbacks are only around 20% of the printed fiction market, according to this Guardian article.)
I suspect it's even less true in the ebook world. |
it isn't: Amazon pays based on list price if they are doing the discounting.
There's also the matter of who pays full price at all.
All print books are discounted, whether it be 5% at non-chain stores, 30% at the chains, or 45% at Amazon, or varying rates in between.
Given how money is distributed in the pbook business, the difference in money going to an author between a high price sale or a discounted sale is spare change. (The difference to the commerce side--retailer, distributor, publisher--is more noticeable but that isn't art.)
There is no special virtue in paying list price.
These days, smart authors maintain patreon pages so those that care about supporting art can support them directly. Now that is virtuous.
Everybody else makes due with whatever filters down to them--8-12%--or keeps their day job. The real world of publishing is nothing like the idealized dream of days gone by. If it ever existed.
There are exceptions: Patterson, King, Roberts, other big names. But they get their money upfront. For tge rest, well, as the publishers themselves say over 70 percent of books don't earn out. And those that do barely do so. Which isn't to say they're not profitable, just that sale prices have no significant effect on author income. All they ever see is the "advance".
Like an author?
Want to give them money?
Go to their author website.