Double Your Money; Screw the Author!

By Darren E Laws

It would appear that the larger publishing houses are finally cottoning on to the fact that there could be money to be made from eBooks. I guess when you are in the midst of an economic depression, you are making swingeing redundancies, cutting marketing spend (suicidal!) and still paying authors million dollar plus advances and facing falling sales, you need to claw the money back somehow.

And what better way than to double your profits on eBooks overnight by cutting the royalty (in half) which it pays to authors. When I say authors I mean this more pluralistically as opposed to the very small minority who take the lions share with huge advances. Frankly, if they earned half the royalty it would be no big deal.

But the fact is that Random House among others feel it is fine to reduce the royalty rate it pays its authors just at a time when eBooks finally appear to have not only credibility in the market but also a platform and devices on which to read them; be they Kindle's or iPhones.

How surprising…