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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Or perhaps a better idea is to change the business model so that there aren't so many failures and no way to recoup the loss. At least with ebooks, once the initial upfront costs are done, that book can "live" forever and attempt to earn out.
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How do you know in advance who will be a mega author and who will be a failure? It isn't obvious to me how you pre-weed out the failures.
Plus mega authors almost solely occur in fiction. Stephen King's writing subsidizes both new fiction authors and new and established nonfiction authors. Exceedingly rarely does a nonfiction history book about the ancient Greeks, for example, sell 5,000 copies. Are you suggesting that because the biography of Helen of Troy won't break even it shouldn't be published? And if it should be published, how is it to be paid for?
When you discuss a publisher and what its product should retail for you can't discuss a single book or a single genre; you need to view the whole spectrum of the publisher and recognize that no book stands on its own. When Stephen King submitted his first novel, he was an unknown; somebody took a financial gamble. In his case, it worked out but in most cases it does not and it is because he makes a profit for the publisher that the publisher is able to finance the search for the next Stephen King and publish important books such as the writings of Marcel Proust or Reinhold Niebuhr.