[jmaloney]

Originally Posted by mcl

NNo, a very few quite vocal authors seem to be wholly on Macmillan's side. Others are staunchly against it: http://lynnabbey.com/blog/ , http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/29...macmillan.html , just as an example.

Well, they both seem to be saying that they'd prefer not to have to deal with either Amazon or Macmillan (or other big publishing houses). But I don't know that they're staunchly against it. Doctorow even linked to the same Scalzi post I did, saying, "John Scalzi brings the sarcasm and the smarts in this cogent analysis..." And in another post, he links to a different Scalzi post, this time saying "John Scalzi says smart things about the Macmillan/Amazon spat." I don't see that as him disagreeing at all with what Scalzi's saying.

Originally Posted by Pardoz

One hopes that he merely mis-spoke, and that he actually understands the difference between the list price (which is what standard publishing contracts base royalties on) and the sale price (which is whatever individual retailers sell the book for).

I don't know that he either misspoke or fails to understand the difference. From here (emphasis mine):

2. "Net Receipts Percentage" Royalties

Another royalties arrangement is the "Net Receipts Percentage" model, which is applicable when authors approach major publishing houses to market their books. Currently, many publishing houses are now using this royalties model. Some of these are Macmillan, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

In this model the writer will get a certain percent of the net sale of the ebook. This percentage typically amounts to between 10 and 25 percent of the net proceeds.

For example, first assume that the royalties arrangement is such that the writer gets 20 percent of the net sales. Then also assume that the list price is $20, and that the net sales for the publisher is, say, 60 percent of the list price (i.e., the retailer gets 40 percent). In that case, the author's royalties would be $2.40 per ebook (0.20 x 0.60 x 20).