At 8:52 AM -0500 7/19/07, Larry Garfield wrote:
On Thursday 19 July 2007, Daniel Brown wrote:
> The problem with that, though, is that a lot of publishers require
exclusivity, so an author is bound (no pun intended) by contract not
to publish elsewhere - including on their own website.
--
Daniel P. Brown
That is, however, a very common argument in favor of online distribution. It
cuts out the middle-men, reduces costs, saves trees, and increases the
revenue per unit for the original author/artist. Of course, the copyright
cartels (which includes most book publishers) object to that because they're
the middle-men being cut out, and that's how you get exclusivity contracts,
DRM, and similar anti-artist and anti-consumer bad things.
--
Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42
Bad things?
A publisher, and most other middleman, provide some sort of service
-- and it's reasonable to expect them to protect their investment.
Nobody (except me) works for nothing.
If you want to go on your own, no problem then you handle the
marketing, distributing, advertising, collections, liability,
copyright, security, and all the rest of the responsibilities that
"doing it yourself" entails.
However, understand that if you write the best book ever, it might
not be realized until after you're dead.
So, begins the "trade-off's" that we all have to make.
As a consumer, you want buy the the "best" book? Are you willing to
search the net until you find some "out of the way" author who says
his book is the best and then trust that it is? OR, are you more
comfortable with buying from your local book store where known
publisher place their books? Everything is a trade-off. Risk vs value.
It's one thing to say "If we cut out the middleman, then we can all
buy cheaper books!" -- but it's another to find books worth buying
without a publisher.
I never met a man/profession that didn't provide some improvement to
the overall quality of life -- except of course politicians and
insurance companies.
Cheers,
tedd
--
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http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com
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