Recently an email has been sent from Amazon asking authors to advocate on their behalf to push publishers to make e-books cheaper. Theres been a large number (majority if not all) authors that have responded and said they would do no such thing. Im one of those authors that supports the publishers and I want to explain why. I think its forgotten just how much work goes into the making of a book and very little of it has to do with printing. It literally takes hundreds upon hundreds of hours to write a novel. Most authors take a few months up to years to write a single novel. Then there are editors (usually several rounds), interior formatting, cover formatting, cover design, illustrations, marketing, marketing material, internet costs, distribution set up, distribution costs, etc. An e-book has separate formatting and distribution set up. Each media format a book is in (audio, e-book, etc) takes different formatting. When you buy a movie ticket for $10 each you get 90 minutes of entertainment. When you buy an e-book for $12 versus the paperback for $17, its still the same book that took the same amount of time and effort to put together. You are NOT paying for printing costs - youre paying for the blood, sweat, and tears of an author, publisher, editor, artists that put their hard work into a book for many many hours of entertaining. By Amazon asking authors to lower the costs of the books even further, theyre devaluing the hard work that goes into a book. They already emailed authors asking for their support and authors rejected it. A group of about 900 authors signed a petition last month—set to run as a full-page ad in The New York Times —protesting Amazons tactics. The petition was signed by some well-known authors, including Stephen King, Paul Auster and Jennifer Egan. The result of the dispute with Hachette could have far-reaching implications for other publishers which are expected to enter contract talks with Amazon later this year. Amazon has said it is willing to suffer some damage to its reputation in order to do what it feels is best for customers. This is about price hacking, this is NOT about whats best for the customers. So, as an author, Im not asking you to take our side or Amazons. I just wanted to share our perspective so that you can make an informed decision. My guess is Amazon will now pressure the customers to speak up since they couldnt get the authors to do so. Feel free to share this with anyone or comment with your thoughts.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 01:31:55 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015