It’s Day 2 of Author Monetization Week! Yesterday we looked at, you know, making money off that whole book thing. But come on, that’s SO 2007. Even as early as 2008, Paul Krugman was wondering if authors would soon find that the ancillary market is the market. With the advent of the Kindle he saw […]
Publishing Economics
Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing: Which Way Will You Make More Money?
It’s author monetization week! Monday through Thursday this week I’m going to have a series of posts on a crucial topic for the modern writer: How to make money. Today we’ll start with the books themselves. With the e-revolution (e-volution?) well underway, print sales are declining and there’s a great disparity between the amount an […]
Why (Most) Publishers Are Still In New York
When publishing outsiders are suggesting cures for what ails the business, one very common suggestion is that publishers ditch their New York real estate and head for the sticks. Why do they need to pay Manhattan rent? Why indeed? Well, first this ignores that there are actually quite a few publishers outside of New York. […]
Why Some E-Books Cost More Than the Hardcover
The good people at Reddit recently noticed something peculiar and engaged in a spirited debate about it. The topic? A bete noir for many an e-book reader: E-books priced more than their print edition. How could this possibly be? Paper costs more than electrons, so surely e-books should be cheaper, right? Believe it or not, […]
Amanda Hocking and the 99-Cent Kindle Millionaires
As Amanda Hocking said herself, “I don’t understand why the internet suddenly picked up on me this past week, but it definitely did.” And how. The writing world is abuzz about Amanda Hocking, the 26-year-old self-published author who sold over 450,000 copies of her e-books in January alone, mostly priced between 99 cents and $2.99. […]
This Week in Books 3/4/11
Lots of links this week! Shall we? Some big news in the book world as Random House, the lone holdout among the six major publishers, has agreed to Apple’s terms and will be moving over to the agency model. What is the agency model? Well, this post of yore provides some background, but for readers […]