Quote:
Originally Posted by eGeezer
Well, I hope I made it plain that I have no idea how the money flow works in publishing, so I am assuming that your friend's example is that it is more that the author is on a commission instead of the retailer.
I assumed the author would get a given amount of the wholesale price, and the retailer messing around with the gap between wholesale and suggested retail (or below) would have no effect on that, since once the retailer pays the price, they can't go back and say "I'm not going to pay that price because I chose to sell it for less."
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It's not a matter of commissions & wholesale/retail pricing.
If Amazon sells her book in hardcover, new, she gets a royalty check. If they sell it in paperback, new, she gets a royalty check for a bit less. If they sell a used copy of it, she gets nothing.
And she understands that people are mostly going to buy the used copies, that most people, given a choice between $19.95 hardcover and $2.50 paperback, will choose the paperback.
Ten years ago, people almost never that choice in the same shop. Now, Amazon has made used copies (which don't trigger royalties) widely available, and it's killing the midlist authors.