The collective insanity of the publishing industry

Post by ghaff » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #143

ghaff wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, for someone who can establish a good relationship with a good publisher, is a perfectly reasonable position to take. Publishers are like any other service. If they provide good value, authors should use use them and otherwise not use them.

On the other, other hand, editing, etc., is a one time cost. And, as far as I can tell, Publishers, however, take their share per-copy. And, IIRC, the final profits are divided about 50/50 between author and publisher. Charlie may be leaving a significant chunk of money on the table, given his popularity. I wonder how much more work it would be to get a good relationship with a single priced editing service over a tr…

Post by grey-area » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 11:30 PM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #56

grey-area wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a little out of date, but the breakdown is something like 40% retailer, 10% distribution, 10% print, 5-10% author, 10% editorial, 20% profit. On future print runs the publisher gets more profit of course. NB the retailer takes most of the profit. For ebooks the situation is worse in that Amazon takes 70% unless you choose to sell exclusively, but at least canny authors can bypass the publisher. You can…

Oh hey, someone better-informed than me. There's also a sizeable fraction of the reading public of all ages who still prefer print books for a host of reasons both sentimental and practical. (The one I've just discovered: I can't read ebooks before bed because the blue light from the iPad screen keeps me up. Whoops.) Ebooks have mostly killed the mass-market paperback, though---more's the pity for beach-reading and o…