Author:
I don't like the pricing scale of Amazon. They aren't doing the heavy lifting in book promotions. They provide a venue for authors and readers to find one another. What I do like is many authors who would not ever get published by the big mainstream publishers are able to find an outlet for their talent. More than that, the main stream publishers are no longer the gods of publishing deciding who their anointed one will be.
Amazon is rattling everyone's cage in the publishing industry which is a good thing. I believe many publishers are afraid the next Steven King will show up and none of them has that author in their stable of writers.
Amazon's might divides opinion at world's biggest book fair
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/amazon...
Comments
Heavy lifting?
Why should they? Unlike most major publishers, Amazon doesn’t toss 99% of their submissions into the trash pile in order to ensure that any effort at all that they invest in an author will be repaid ten times over. What they do is to provide a venue whereby authors can invest in their own books. Want a professional cover? Either do your own or hire an artist. They come almost as cheap as writers, and for the same reasons. Want to plan out a publicity strategy? Hire it done, if you can’t think of anything on your own. Want some professional editing, ditto. Professional editors usually work for about a dollar a page, although one can easily find people who'll charge much more.
It’s completely true that one finds a lot of books on Amazon that aren’t very well put-together, but it’s equally true that one can find authors whose works you would have paid twice or three times the price for (or more) if one had purchased the book from a major publisher.
You get what you pay for on both ends of the equation, and I personally think that that’s a good thing.
Publishers are a little like restaurants. If you want a superb meal that you might remember with fondness for years to come, you’re probably going to have to make reservations at a high-priced restaurant with a five-star rating and pay quite a bit of money for the privilege. You might be required to "dress appropriately" for the venue. You might well be asked to leave if your party gets rowdy. It goes with the territory.
On the other hand, if you just want an inexpensive meal, you might want to check out the local McDonalds hamburger franchise, where you’re almost guaranteed to have an unmemorable experience. That’s the way it goes.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
McDonalds my ass
I would hate to think that I'm being compared to McDonald's, that I do nothing more than satiate an appetite until a better meal comes along. I like to think of myself as that little Bistro in the dark corner of town that produces some really fine meals at a decent price but not many people know about me because I don't have the advertising budget of Gordon Ramsey.
The issue with Amazon is though you find a few decent "mom and pop" restaurants, there are a ton of stale Twinkees and Ramen noodles that are better off left on the shelf.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
I don't think...
it's a secret that the publishing industry is in a state of flux. Things are changing. When Amazon bought the Mobipocket company back in 2005, few knew what was going to happen. All of a sudden electronic rights, which up to about that point were almost meaningless, then became extremely important. For example, Michael Stackpole asked for the e-rights to be returned to him for several of his older novels Bantam had published as part of his payment for writing the Dragoncrown War series.
Now we have this whole thing between Hachette and Amazon. There's way too much to sum up quickly, but in my opinion it's all about price fixing for ebooks. Mainstream publishing still wants to charge near print title cost for ebooks. And there's a lot of backlash from consumers at that price point. If you're thinking of publishing your work, it's something to read up on.
~And so it goes...
I've had discussions about
I've had discussions about that one (if you want to hunt through old comments I've made, you can get specifics).
Here are the major costs for publishers.
1) Editors/editing (including layouts)
2) Advertising
3) Printing
4) Distribution
5) Overhead (facilities, editor in chief, receptionists, etc)
6) Authors. (Yes, this was deliberately put at the bottom. The rest are arbitrary)
With Electronic publishing, number 3 and 4 above are reduced to next to nothing. For the cost of shipping one book across the country, you can distribute a thousand (or more) electronic copies of the same book. With electronic distribution, you also don't have the cost of taking books back from the seller, or having them destroyed. Advertising has changed a lot as well, but I couldn't give anything realistic.
I know that some book stores experimented with Print On Demand, having a book printer in the back, for those they didn't have in stock, but had available electronically. I don't know how that's worked out at all. I suspect that the high cost of the machines has kept it prohibitive, combined with the publisher not wanting to reduce their cut.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
E First Publishers
E first publishers tend to want the Author to do most of the advertising, via social media.
some actually pay a pretty decent percentage for the royalties [ best I have heard is 40% to the Author ], the better publishing houses don't charge the author, and do reject most manuscripts, but their imprint [ name ] gains a reputation that helps to sell books by new authors.
As with everything, you get a trade off, free professional editing,artwork etc, for a better chance of decent sales, or go with a "vanity" publisher and pay to get your book published, do all the advertising, editing, layout, artwork [ or pay for it ]. Naturally it is the author's choice to make, but I personally think that going with the publisher that demands a good manuscript is better in the long run for your continuing sales.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Actually, the best deal at Amazon is Seventy Percent
...when you enrol in their KDP programme, although they do deduct "delivery" costs – and VAT at 3% if one lives within the European Union. The delivery cost for books that one receives "free of charge" through connection to the Kindle network (through wireless telco providers, mostly) is minimal. If you’re downloading over your own Internet connexion, I don’t believe there’s any charge at all.
That’s part of what makes Amazon attractive to writers; they can charge much less per book and still make lots more money from each copy than if they'd gone with a traditional publisher.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Free services
Well, not so much. If one looks at one’s contract and royalty statements, one will find that almost all those services, "free" professional editing, artwork, etc, are either specifically mentioned as part of their *large* slice of the pie or are charged separately, especially services for which you’re on the hook to "indemnify" the publisher if you either don’t deliver or deliver substandard content.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style