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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Or, to put it another way: The author gets a profit of 8-15% of sales, in the form of royalties. The publisher (their shareholders, to be precise) gets a profit of 8-15% for its work as well. So why does this qualify as unfair or exploitative profit...?
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And to quote Charles Stross from a reason blog entry:
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There's a lot more stuff going on behind the scenes. In particular, it looks like the industry-wide shift to the agency model, catalysed by Apple, has finally cracked open the door to a renegotiation of royalty rates payable by publishers to authors for ebooks. The traditional 10% royalty rate on hardcovers didn't come out of nowhere — it reflected a 50/50 split in the profits (the other 80% of the cover price going on production, printing, and distribution). With much lower printing and distribution costs, it looks like royalty rates of 25% or 30%, on a much lower overall price, may be where things are going under the new model.
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