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Originally Posted by pwalker8
I said this is what I do to support my favored authors. No where do I say or imply that I am the only person who supports my favored authors. Authors are paid per copy sold. They do not earn a salary from the publisher, so yes, when I buy a book, that author gets money for the book I bought. They get more money for a hard back than a paper back since it's a percentage of the price of the book. That money may apply to their advance, or they may have already earned out in which case they get a check for their sales at some point in the future.
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Elaborating, if you buy a full priced hardcover the author will get perhaps 15% if they have earned out. Otherwise, of course, they get nothing unless and until they do earn out. A full priced tradpub ebook the royalty rate will be about 25%. ff you buy a full price Indie e-book from Amazon the author usually gets 70%. Quite a difference in incentives. And there are wide variations. The last I looked, for instance, Bookouture, a more innovative traditional publisher now acquired by Hachette paid 50% royalty on its e-books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
If you are a library patron and only get your books there, then you do not carry an author, unless of course you belong to a private library that is subscription based. Most libraries in the US are supported by tax dollars from all the people who pay taxes in that tax district. A library patron no more supports an author than he or she pays a police officer's salary (for those who want to try to talk their way out of a ticket by telling the cop they pay the cop's salary).
In my local tax district, libraries, like schools, are supported from property taxes, so unless you are a property owner, you don't even have that thin reed for support. I'm a property owner and I have no problem with my money going to libraries. They serve a useful purpose, just like jails, police stations and schools. But that doesn't imply that I personally pay the cops or teacher's salary. It certainly doesn't imply that because the local police department buys guns that gun manufacturers should be sending me a thank you note.
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But of course libraries do themselves buy the books, often in substantial numbers and at higher prices than direct sales to consumers. What a library buys is of course heavily influenced by the demand or expected demand from its patrons for particular authors and books. Simply by borrowing a book or successfully requesting that a library purchase a book a library patron is contributing to the profits of the publisher and, to a lesser extent, the author. The money is the same whether it arrives directly or indirectly.