Quote:
Originally Posted by pricecw
Actually, this is happening in a lot of industries right now. Big corporations cut salaries by 5-10% and your choice is take the cut or leave.
This is really nothing new, a lot of times it is temporary, but recently it has been permanent (about a year ago it was 5% for the company I work for).
--Carl
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It's still rare relative to layoffs, and yes it sucks. And it's taken a near depression in the economy to cause. My points more we all feel terrible when it happens to us. Hell, it happened to me this year as all university employees in my state had to take furlough days this academic year which amount to about a 5% pay cut as well. Next years state budget doesn't look good either, so I expect the same or worse next year.
Yet will any of us piss and moan when it happens to us, some bash authors for worrying about taking pay cuts on their work just because a book is sold as an e-book rather than a physical book (i.e. nothing to do with the economy, their publisher struggling to stay in business etc.).
I was upset about my furloughs, so it would be pretty hypocritical for me to say the authors should just "suck it up" and do the same work for less pay.
The solution is to just scrap DRM (or at the very least make it much less restrictive) and price e-books close to the level of their current print counterpart. Price is higher when on the the hardcover is available, and when the paperback comes out drop the e-book price to at or a little below that price.
Without DRM the e-book should have the same value to a reader as the physical book, so not many should have issues paying the same or a little less for the paperbook like they do now. Some will still of course, but you can't please everyone.