Quote:
Originally Posted by Knipfty
I cannot tell the difference between the publisher and the author. As far as I am concerned they are one in the same as the author has signed up with the publisher. I have mailed on author and still have not received a reply from them. In some postings, the authors claim that the publishers are not responsive to their emails.
I expect that my Kindle ebooks to cost less than any new DTB. I had a conversation with a publishing industry person on the train one morning back in January. She was proofreading on a Sony unit and I had my Kindle open. Somewhere during the conversation we got on to the topic of pricing. Her stance and that of much of the major publishers was that I am paying for content, how I choose to read it was my business, but the I was paying for the content. I disagree.
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If you're expecting authors to have any control over the price of their books, whether cover price or a discount price, then you are going to be disappointed. Perhaps very high level authors like Stephen King
may have that kind of power, but very few other authors do.
Also, with publishing in such dire straits at the moment, with massive layoffs and consolidations, if any aspect of what they are doing is losing money, it probably won't survive. Remember, ebooks are still only a small fraction of their profits.
My opinion is that, at this point in the game, the publishers are not the ones who will suffer much from this action, but the authors.
Note that I
do think it's wrong for an ebook to cost more than a printed book, even though the differences in the costs of production are probably not as great as most would believe.
What I'm saying here is that authors will be hurt if their books do not sell. It's a simple equation to the publishers. They aren't thinking, "oh, Author A's books aren't selling. Our prices on ebooks must be too high." They are more likely thinking what I wrote before, "Author A's books aren't selling, don't buy any more manuscripts from him or her."
I believe that a blogging campaign would be much more effective and do less harm to individual authors.
(All imo, of course.)