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Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
All very interesting, but complex and highly technical manuals are not the same market as novels, no?
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You are correct, the markets are different and so the covers are designed for the market. Also, the more specialized the market, the less important the cover is; conversely, the broader the market, the more important the cover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
I still think that your values are ludicrously high.
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You may think they are much too high, but publishers pay them and so they are marketplace values. Whether you think they are worth it for your market is not the issue; what the market pays is the issue, and the market does pay these kinds of values and more, just as it pays significantly less as witnessed by your posts. And the original suggestion was that authors should hire freelancers to do it all rather than using publishers and my point is that few authors have the resources or are willing to pay out of their own pocket and take the gamble when a publisher will do it.
I once read (and can't remember the source) that (in paraphrase) the difference between a smart person and a not-so-smart person is that the latter gambles with his/her own money whereas the former gambles with someone else's money. (Sounds a lot like our big banks.)
Think of it like the automobile market: a $10,000 car will get you from point A to point B just as readily as a $350,000 car, yet there are $10,000 cars and $1,000,000+ cars being bought and sold in the marketplace. You may think spending $50,000 on a car is foolish, expensive, or ludicrous because you are satisfied with a $15,000 car that fits your needs, but your car doesn't fit everyone's needs or do the job for everyone.