Nemesis999
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2004
- Messages
- 2,763
Hardware depreciation is not included because the publisher typically doesn't own the hardware for pressing. A press company does. http://www.rrdonnelley.com/wwwRRD1/Markets/BookPublishing/BookPublishing.asp as an example.
You can hide a cost behind as many layers as you want. It still comes out in the final price. Having someone else print your books doesn't make the expenses magically disappear, it just moves it.
Medium differences are not the money, the data is. If we don't agree on this basic tenant, then the rest of this argument is moot. At the end of the day, this is "printed" vs "electronic". The electronic medium can have EVEN MORE value added than the printed at the end of the day too, because it'll never have pages go missing, or be damaged by the elements. It can be made searchable by keyword. You can adjust the font to work for you. On some books, the reader can even dictate it to you.
And this is the exact same kinda of fucked up logic that is killing music. Providing less does not make your product worth more. Period.
Amazon gets the same as any other tier 1 bookseller on printed books: 50%. I can't speak to the 30% number.
I can, it says right in the article. Macmillian is threatening to delay Amazon's shipments by 7 months if they don't accept a 30% cut.
Piracy is already in full swing in its current form. Check out newsgroups and bittorrent for a swath of books that are already being pirated.
"we've been driving straight towards this brick wall for years now. It's getting pretty close. Maybe we should just keep flooring the accelerator and see how it turns out."
There are A LOT of hands that go into a book from the author down to the guy sweeping the floor at the bookstore/warehouse, and they all like to get paid. I'm not certain how to convince you of this. If you can sort out a way for a writer to get paid well without all the hands and/or overhead, I'm certain that there are some publishers that would like to have a word with you. My speculation is that you think a large chunk of overhead magically goes away when you switch to an eBook setup, and sadly, that's simply not true. Perhaps with self publishing this may be the case, but the AUTHOR loses a bunch of things when they go that route: copy editors, ad execs who can really help them sell their book, sales weasles who can help them sell the book... And the time that goes into doing all this stuff is less time the author has to write. If the author is willing to lose these things, more power to them. Many have taken their books back (there is a process for this) and started reselling them privately after the publisher has deemed them "out of print". Some have made good traction with this.
You realize that using YOUR $3 number their margins still increase?