Old Model vs. New Model

[Top100EbooksRank]

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/06...k-value_2.html



The chart refers to Smashwords (which takes the 10% cut).
Amazon pays 70% (minus a small data charge) to authors.

[Rob Lister]

Buried somewhere in that graphic or its associated article must be details of the differences between what you get with a 35% publisher and what you get with a 10% publisher. Perhaps it was lost in the lossy compression of jpeg. Not sure why its missing from the article.

[heySkippy]

^^ You're talking about the 2.25% for the agent?

edit - never mind, I read your post wrong.

[mr ploppy]

Last I heard, publishers were creaming off 60% of net for ebooks, not 10%.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

Buried somewhere in that graphic or its associated article must be details of the differences between what you get with a 35% publisher and what you get with a 10% publisher. Perhaps it was lost in the lossy compression of jpeg. Not sure why its missing from the article.

Well, you get the book printed, bound, and delivered, for one thing.

I always think graphs like this are a little misleading when they don't include necessary costs - the 35% old model cut publisher includes costs for editing, printing, binding, and delivery, which makes the actual publisher profit substantially less.

[Top100EbooksRank]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Last I heard, publishers were creaming off 60% of net for ebooks, not 10%.

30% to distributors
70% to publishers/authors, which breaks down to
----17.5% to authors
----52.5% to publishers

Well, the article is really about Smashwords as a publisher. If you look at it in that context, the graph makes much more sense: as a publisher, their cut of the pie is minimal. But it also sounds like the services they offer are minimal (they vet books, don't edit them; they only offer electronic editions, not electronic and print). As such, the risk to them is much lower than with traditional publishers.

Will the Smashwords model work out? I don't know. They are really offloading the risk onto the author and the reader. In the end, either one or both may revolt. But it is bound to be good in one sense: traditional publishers are going to have to do a better job if they are going to survive. They're going to have to push harder to generate more revenues for authors and improve the quality to hold onto readers. Otherwise they just won't be able to justify the large cut that they are asking for.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Well, the article is really about Smashwords as a publisher. If you look at it in that context, the graph makes much more sense: as a publisher, their cut of the pie is minimal. But it also sounds like the services they offer are minimal (they vet books, don't edit them; they only offer electronic editions, not electronic and print). As such, the risk to them is much lower than with traditional publishers.

They really aren't a publishers, and it is misleading for them to describe themselves as such. The are an ebook wholesaler/distributor (and retailer). They sell books themselves, but their key function is to provide an easy way for authors to get ebooks into other retailers catalogs. But they really don't provide any of the other services a publisher does.