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Originally Posted by Seli
Music at least is a different business from book-publishing. The core of music has always been performance, in a way recorded music is only tacked on. Books/stories were always meant to be copied and passed on.
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*BOOKS* may well be meant to be 'passed on', but storytelling is pretty much a 'performance-oriented' art. (And then there's the whole, "You can have my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands" viewpoint - to which I happen to subscribe!
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You now ignore 'cover design' (even an ebook needs a graphic to catch attention), editing and proofreading to start with, all of these would have to be paid by the author.
How many self-published authors do you know that sell 12.500 copies @ $2 let alone at $6?
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Don't know, but self-publishing sales figures is a relevant point. Still, the question also arises, how many publishing-house, mid-list authors have books that have reached the 12,500 copies sales volume??? Thus, if we can determine that the average first-time genre author sells 7,000 copies @ $6.99 (or 5,000 or even 2,700), then after deducting editing, formatting and art costs, the self-published author who chooses the Amazon DTP ebook route *WILL* make more than one who sells to MacM for a $10,000 advance and an 8% royalty rate. ($4.05 * 7,000 = $28,350 - less, of course any editing, layout and formatting and cover art fees.)
And you're right again, cover art, even for an ebook is very important. I'd no more buy an ebook with a generic white w/black-color text 'cover' than I'd buy a box of cereal with that kind of packaging.
Derek