ebooks

Great blogger, JA Konrath, on how the big publishing houses are killing themselves by ignoring the proper pricing and distribution of ebooks, and how they're screwing the writers:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

So now I've got another avenue to think about. Apart from self-publishing, one can sell $3 ebooks and make the same profit as going with a big publisher who charges people $25 to buy your book. Sure, not everyone wants an ebook, but now there's another option for those who do. The big publishers are pricing themselves out of the game, and they don't like the new frontier very much. It's cutting into their domination of the market, and their profits.

If a print book doesn't sell well, it dies a horrible, ignoble death, and the publisher will needlessly tie up the rights for years. So a writer can't get their backlist available to people, which pretty much means they can't make a living. With the new models, a writer can control their books, and keep them in print, which means they keeps selling.

The cost model is going out of book producing, which is how they've held writers over a barrel for so long. With POD, that model is blown apart as well.

No more returned books, no dumping thousands of unsold books in discount bins (for which the writer gets nothing), no waiting for meager checks months or years afterward from tardy or dishonest "creative accounting" publishers, none of the hassle of dealing with the greedy gatekeepers. Wow- and one gets to pick their own cover. And not have to wait years to get each book out.

For a writer with a lot of work to get out, this is looking better and better.