But that is the problem. Too many people don't care what a publisher's costs are. How many times has something about "maybe they don't need those New York offices" been thrown around? Despite the fact that there are completely legitimate reasons a corporation would want to have an office in the biggest, most economically influential, city in the United States? In this thread, there is only One-True-Way you can "rightfully" make money: you must do it all yourself, and you must primarily use Amazon. Any other business plan is illegitimate solely by virtue of the fact that people who self-publish say so. How DARE these companies actually have overhead and employees? They should be ashamed of themselves for actually paying salaries to people.
Really, if an indie can "get away" with using untrained beta readers instead of editors, why can't the big publishers? If a $35 pre-made cover is good enough for indies, why should trade publishers use anything else? And really, why are they wasting all that money on print books anyway. Nobody reads them. Despite the fact that print sales have rebounded over the last two years. But nobody reads print so why spend money on it?
While I believe that Hachette has every right to set the retail price for their books and heartily agree that all books (digital, print and audio) are not created the same and therefore shouldn't necessarily be priced the same, many self-published authors like myself don't have pre-made covers or solely use beta readers to proof our work. I have an editor, proof readers and critique partners. I have my covers designed by a professional graphic designer. I have a marketing budget and promote my butt off when my book comes out.
And I've worked in corporate America for most of my adult life. I worked in NYC for years. There is a LOT of waste there. A ton of it. The people who usually do the "work" are the ones who get paid the least. NY editors make very little. I know, I interviewed at a publishing company for a job shortly after graduating from college. I couldn't afford to take the pay cut, it was too steep.
My contract with a NY publisher paid me an advance of $2500/bk and 6% royalties. My first cheque (I received a year after the book was published) was $453. I got the absolute smallest piece of that pie. If not for ebooks, I wouldn't have made -- to this day -- $5000 on the first book and even less on the second, which had a print run of 13,000.
Yes, traditional publishers have overhead costs to be considered. I understand that. They can't afford to give me a straight 70% like Apple does (keeping in my mind here, I act as publisher and author). But, IMO, they can certainly give me more than the 15% I currently get off my NY digital books.
Thankfully, I now have the choice to go it on my own.
And to @Lady Vine, I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments. I saw my rankings take a hit when KU was rolled out. I saw all the audio books I'd planned to do go up in smoke when ACX announced our flat 40% take. I not only write the book, I pay a narrator thousands of dollars to do the work, I have the cover redesigned and do the quality check, and they put it up on their site and sell it to customers, and they take 60%. Sounds fair to me. Nope, it actually sounds more like business as usual.
I don't see any heroes here if that's what people are looking for. Traditional publishing and Amazon are looking out for themselves. But at least I know that. The only one looking out for me is me.
