[Info-vax] OT: About Digital and divisions

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article
<ea7af4a5-fb46-4a8d-ac6b-0c0a6edee203 at r9g2000vbw.googlegroups.com>, Neil
Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes: 

> Someone (perhaps it was Roland Hughes) relayed a personal story a few
> years back about publishing through Amazon. In the early days of
> Amazon the web site grabbed something like 25% of the costs sent back
> "to the industry" which includes "the creative talent" as well as the
> marketing talent". Nut then along came iTunes who were reaping
> something like 70% and returning 30%. That's when Amazon go the
> message and decided to become more iTunes-like. Amazon will make
> direct deals with authors but require you to sign on with the 70/30
> split, or worse.

In the early phases of a new product, one can find all sorts of models, 
ideas, concepts.  For various reasons, most die off and some set of 
standard conditions evolve.

> Even still, it kind of bothers me that a modern-day Isaac Asimov (or
> in the case of iTunes, a modern day Johann Sebastian Bach) would only
> get 30% of the royalties. Since these people are the creative talent,
> they should get at least 50%. This would encourage them to create more
> content because this stuff makes the world more enjoyable.

There are various sorts of contract, of course, and the rich and famous 
can demand more, but with a traditional (paper) book, the standard was 
that the author got about 10% of the cover price.  One shouldn't think 
that if the author gets x% (from which, of course, he has to pay his own 
costs, but they are not very high in most cases), then someone else gets 
(100-x)% in PROFITS.  There are various costs.  These might be somewhat 
less for purely electronic publishing.