Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
Sooo... Getting more into the hands of the authors is a *bad thing* now? Good to know. 
Derek |
The only ones gaining would be Amazon.
Under Amazon's rule only the top-selling big-name authors would have benefited.
Amazon certainly isn't paying any advances, so struggling midlist authors who rely on advances to pay the bills would have found themselves with a big hole in their finances.
Amazon wouldn't be paying for editing, so authors would either have the option of paying for that themselves, upfront (and it's
expensive to do properly) or going without and letting the standard decline.
Amazon's idea of marketing is reader reviews, so the authors who get to the top of the rankings are those who game the system or spend their time begging fans to leave positive reviews.
Amazon's current 70% DTP rate is simply a reaction to the moves made by publishers. Before that it was 35% for years. So, for 35% of the net take the author gets no advance and has to pay all upfront costs and conduct all marketing - you think that means more money in authors' pockets?
Dream on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barcey
The publishers have only themselves to blames for how big Amazon has grown. It's their own mistakes and inability to execute that has made Amazon successful.
It's their own insistence on DRM that is giving Amazon the power.
They actually think it's easier to manipulate the entire industry through price fixing and to educate the consumer on "what the price has to be" rather then adapt to the free market price. When they fail they'll blame Amazon again.
|
As the article mentions, publishers got into this mess because they
didn't want to fix prices. They had the option to set up their own ecommerce operations.
In
2001 Jason Epstein (then editorial director of Random House) wrote, "Had publishers taken advantage of the Internet a decade ago by forming a consortium, open to all publishers on equal terms, to create a universal catalog and a combined warehouse from which to sell books directly to readers they would have taken a crucial first step toward the future face-to-face digital marketplace." Such a catalog would, of course, have been under the publishers' complete control and allowed them to pre-empt Amazon in the process of driving physical bookstores out of business.
Instead, they dithered, hoping to protect the network of mutually-competing bookstores that had been built up since the '50s. Instead, their desire to retain a competitive, yet less efficient system allowed a ruthless and ambitious entity to step in and attempt a take-over.
Amazon's strategy has been to bank on consumer's short-term self-interest to gain a position where it can dictate to both producers and consumers. Anyone who can see beyond the next dollar in their pocket will realise how dangerous that can be.