[hamner]

I love this, a beautiful example of disruptive innovation:

-Authors get up to 70%, as opposed to 5-15% -Far less trees are killed

-Eliminates the role of the publisher / physical distribution channel, which claimed the lion's share of the profits without adding creative value

-Marginal cost of distributing an extra book is on the order of cents

I've not read a hardcover book since getting a Kindle.

[cstross]

The publisher isn't a distributor. Rather, they provide editorial and marketing services and a hell of a lot of inputs that are largely invisible to the end user. The lions share of the profit doesn't go to the publisher -- who typically nets as much as the author after paying for all the pre-press stuff -- but to the distribution channel. Which is Amazon (insofar as they're trying to take over and merge the roles of distributors/wholesalers and retailers).

[veyron]

Isn't that true of all businesses though (music, movies, games, and other media)?

[true_religion]

It's true in games.

But it wasn't true in music---the industry was vertically integrated.

For instance Virgin Megastore sold records in London, and world wide.

Virgin Music produced those records.

Virgin Music Group (known in the US as EMI) handled distribution of the records to out-of-chain companies.

Virgin even broadcast under the label Virgin Radio, and sponsored festivals such as the V-Festival.

That's just one example, but the whole industry was integrated to various degrees.

[wiredfool]

Up voting here, cstross is a subject matter expert.

[acangiano]

Fun fact: Authors get 35%, not 70%, on any sales outside selected countries like the US and UK. Also, if you set the price above $9.99, you are getting 35% only in any country. This may be OK for a novel, but it rarely works for technical authors. And 35% royalty on a technical book you self-publish is absurd.

[runevault]

Yeah the ceiling sort of irks me. I kind of wish they'd have another point at which 70% picked up again that isn't something fiction publishing would risk going for (at least very often) but would make sense for valuable non-fiction books such as those covering programming topics, maybe $35 or $40 bucks.