There is not two sides to this issue. There are three — the writer, the one who actually provides the content, is often ridiculously left out of this equation.

Here’s the issue the way writers see it. The old system is that publishers give writers an advance, based on a number of factors, including, how llong it takes a writer to actually research and write a book. The publisher takes on the cost and risk of editing, printing, distribution and keeping track of sales. (Some writers also self-published, which represents a small number ) The price of the resulting book was based on a number of factors. Not all books are the same, not all priced should be based the same. A book is not a widget or a mass-produced plate — it is the content of the book, not the size or number of pages, that represents the worth of the book. Books can take between six months to six years to research, write and edit.
Over the last twenty years, as bookstores were gobbled up and megabookstores gained a monopoly, the bookstores dictated the price of books based on undercutting the price of their competitors — essentially putting small bookstores of out business by the hundreds. Publishers gave large orders ridiculously high discounts, and often the writer’s contracts stipulated that writers would get smaller royalties on discounted books. And that publishers also loose money.

Then came Amazon. On the positive side, now anybody could get access to millions of books even if they didn’t live near a bookstore. On the negative side, Amazon discounted books further, and sold “used” books side by side with the new, further undercutting the amount of money the publisher and author make. If 2,000 customers would have bought a particular book, but bought each other’s used copies, the publisher and the author make nothing from those used books — and nothing from the 2,000 used copies, in which Amazon or the owner of the copy make all the money. So the publishers have been making the advances to authors smaller and smaller, and many authors are finding it harder to make a living in a field where the average writer makes $60,000 a year (only the top small percentage of authors are getting $100,000 or more per book, despite the hype you see in the media).

Now comes along the E-book. The misconception is — oh, there’s no cost for paper and ink, so the price should be $9.99 for all the books, or even, as I’ve seen many Amazon readers post — “I’m not paying more than $5 for an e-book, those publishers make enough money.” Amazon compounds that misconception by pretending it’s giving e-book writers a better deal than the writer’s publisher — 35% instead of 10 or 4 % in a standard contract. Except that Amazon is not giving writers an advance so that they can write the book. Why is Amazon giving the writer for the right to “publish” the E-book? They don’t edit, they don’t give advances, they barely format the book. Yes, they have a right to some percentage, since it cost them money to create, maintain and run the website and e-book format. But is Amazon entitled to 65%??? The 35% is for the publisher, which leaves the author with nothing, unless they bypass the publisher.

The less money for the publishers, the less money for advances — which has already happened. The less money for advances, the less books of quality, because a professional writer will need to do more books to make a living to pay the rent, food and car payments at a time when writers are being asked to pay for everything from web pages, to spend more time on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s called, strangling the goose that laid the golden egg.

As a former reporter, I saw what happened to newspapers when they went online. People now don’t understand why they should have to pay for content. “I can get it online for free.” What they forget is that someone has to go out there and collect the news that then everyone from AOL to bloggers pass on for free. Newspapers are laying off staff left and right, cutting back, and soon may be out of business completely. Because it takes money to pay enough reporters to go out there and dig up the news and come back and report it.

E-books seem to have the same fate in store for the publishing industry, Marian, which is why you can’t get a job. When Amazon customers feel they should pay $5 for every e-book, or worse, get it for free, they will end up with nothing of quality. Each book is an individual piece of art, which is then mass produced to reach as many people as possible while still allowing the author to make a living writing them. When the vast majority of serious writers can’t even make a modest living doing that anymore, there will be still be books, but mostly junk, written quickly or written by an amateur. Among the dross there may be a few nuggets of gold, but I think the quality of books and of American discourse, which is already in the sewer, will not improve.

I applaud MacMililan for finally taking a stand. I wish more people reporting on this issue would actually ask the Amazon CEO this: What do you bring to the process of writing a book that you deserve the lion’s share of an e-book, instead of the writer and the publisher who is risking advance money to help that book become a reality? Or, a more important question — if you continue to gut the system that supports books getting written, what will you have left to sell?

Hope this gives you and your colleagues a bit more insight into the true worth of books — and the people who actually create them. Don’t forget the writers.