> Me, too. Always have. But they periodically (snicker) threaten to turn my
> domicile into a path house. Then comes a great purge, followed by more
> acquisitions. I doubt I'll buy any serious tomes as e-books. I'm mostly using
> it for mysteries and such. Larger books with charts and graphs and such, also
> photos, need to be on paper. Or an iPad.
The iPad is fantastic as a portfolio display item. Not! It was great
the first month, but people actually prefer to look at the paper
version. Weird.
> I suspect author groups will start to address this in the near future, if
> they aren't already...
Unfortunately, it's the publishers that set the terms. If you want to
be published by a real publisher, you accept their terms. Of course,
exceptions exist when there is a million-selling author who they give
zillion-dollar advances to. It would be like me telling my
stock-photography library to up my percentage. If you want a higher
percentage, then sell them yourself.
The author community isn't happy about the situation and we always
give the publishers grief, but it's no secret that authors are the
lowest rung on the publishing ladder. We get whatever the publisher
benevolently gives us, knowing that they'll make your life miserable
if you don't comply with their rules. If you complain, you'll discover
that your book has mysteriously disappeared from the publisher's
catalog or not shipping or some strange accounting adjustment has been
made to your account. Your marketing rep goes on a two-month vacation
to the Asian subcontinent to work on his own book... Publishers have
ways to punish authors who fight them too much.
E-Books are just the latest way the authors are getting screwed by the
publishers. If you self-publish, E-books are great! You get to avoid a
lot of production costs and then you just do a limited amount of POD
to fulfill the needs of the limited audience that buys paper copies of
the book. With self-publishing and E-books, the average one-lung
author can probably get away with a POD order of 500 copies and
everything else goes E-book. Your overall sales MIGHT be lower, but it
costs you little.
AG
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