Quote:
Originally Posted by dadioflex
You're quite correct. An author should write, proof, edit, design the cover and own his own printing presses as well. Investing six months to a year of your life in writing the book isn't enough, they should spend another two years working alone to code and animate all the interactive features for the e-book.
I never said it was a bad thing for the big companies that pay a team of people to do this - and note they're doing this to a public domain book so they don't even need to employ a writer, and there are a LOT of PD books out there - nor is it a bad thing for people who want to spend money on it, I said it was a bad thing for writers.
Suggesting that a writer, who wants to write, simply acquires, somehow, the skills to produce multimedia content, isn't realistic. Frankly, anyone with that kind of skill set would be working in games or animation, not writing.
Still, great idea. I'm sure Tom Wolfe will be all over it.
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That's all silly.
Authors generally get a royalty that's a certain percent of each book sold. An interactive book like this would generally sell for more than the plain text version. So even though other's did the multimedia work, the author would get more out of each copy sold since they're getting the same percentage of a higher list price for the interactive book.
The people who do the multimedia stuff probably don't get royalties, the companies probably just pay them for hours of work, or a flat rate to create the content for them.
That all depends on the author having a decent contract etc. of course, but there's no reason authors have to get screwed by interactive books. They'll still get their royalty at the least, and it will probably be a bit more than for a sold copy of the print version as the interactive book should sell for a higher price most of the time.