And that makes them vulnerable to anyone with a little smarts to offer writers and readers a better deal.

Until then we’ll all just keep dealing with them and try to make the best of it.

Write on…
Richard

Does that mean its not a mutually beneficial relationship for Amazon and writers? No. Writers can write good content, price their product to sell, and both Amazon and the writer profits if the book sells in big numbers. Sure, lots of things would be better for writers if they were flat-fee’d, but its not going to happen. Doesn’t mean a platform like Amazon gives writers isn’t a potentially very profitable one.

“Why are companies like Amazon charging writers a percentage of the price of their book sales rather than a flat price per book sold?”

The fact that the cost to writers is a percentage rather than a flat fee is my main complaint.

The “digital publishers” costs of displaying the books are not tied to the price that the customer pays for the book so how do they get off with charging the author a percentage? Because writers have been brainwashed for the last 571 years to accept any deal offered by “publishers” just to get their book in print and distributed.

The fee should be a flat fee per book “displayed” not a percentage especially when it comes to ebooks. This new ebook publishing business model is immensely profitable for the digital publishers but only marginally better for the writers.

Admittedly it’s better; but still a long way from ideal for the content creators.

And while we’re at it, why doesn’t Amazon just split the income with the author at the time of sale? Instead they hold my money for 60 days or more? Amazon makes a lot of money from that float. Amazon is using the author’s money to fund their expansion.

And here is another issue. Authors send traffic to the Amazon site ostensibly to buy their book(s). Everyone knows that traffic is gold in this digital internet age. And are the authors compensated for the traffic that they drive Amazon? No!

Yes, Amazon has an affiliate system. But the payouts are so pathetically low that no one could make any money promoting the site.

Like I said, this business model is fantastic for Amazon and the other digital publishers and while better, it’s not so great for the writers. While the writers provide all the content and a substantial portion of the book buying traffic they get only a sliver of the income that they generate for Amazon. It’s a bigger sliver than we were getting form conventional publishers but it’s still the short end of the stick.
Write on…
Richard

At least now, established but forgotten (by their publishers) writers are making significant money off of their backlists, which were sitting languishing before because no print publisher would do anything with them. Authors like John Locke, who hadn’t done very well in print, are making a killing in digital.

I think digital simply opens up a lot more opportunities, and the revenue take is much bigger for authors.

Why are companies like Amazon charging writers a percentage of the price of their book sales rather than a flat price per book sold?

Because they can!

This is a business model which is immensely profitable for Amazon and others that “display” digital books – but it is not the best model for writers who actually create the content that everyone else is getting rich selling.

Write on…

Richard

Apple is an interesting case study. They don’t have to, IMO, move into content ownership and production, since they own such a huge percentage of the collective screens, and have built out the “marketplace” so well where so much of the business is done they can collect their tax and negotiate strongly on revenue splits. They have, of course, done high levels of integration right up to the point of publishing, but have stopped short of essentially becoming publishers (they’re the ones that forced Amazon to accept agency pricing).