Philip Pullman: writers deserve bigger royalties

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MWagner

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In principle, I would agree with him. The trouble is, publishers are in a very powerful position - even with self-publishing as an option, traditional publishing still remains the Holy Grail for the majority of writers, so in the near-term at least they aren't going to be short on submissions.

Additionally, they have remained very stubborn about keeping ebook royalties down - cf how the Shiel Land literary agency self-published Catherine Cookson's backlist because - according to Ian Drury - Transworld refused to offer more than the 25% standard royalties on ebooks:
Catherine Cookson's estate set to infuriate publishing houses by releasing 100 cut-price e-books

I guess it would require a book to go to auction for the ability to negotiate royalties to even come up as an option.

And even if every great debut writer went the self-publishing route, it's so difficult to found among the mass of titles that the writer has to invest a lot of time and energy on promotion - instead of writer - just to begin to call any kind of attention to themselves.

So, for the moment, Pullman presents a great ideal, but I'm not sure publishers will feel threatened by it.
 
for authors/publishing houses see musicians/RIAA... the creators at this point should hold all the cards
 
The 25% deal for the writer on ebooks is outrageous, and indefensible by a publisher, who has the skills and setup to format it and present it in a matter of hours (minutes?), with no charge for materials. I love to foresee a boycott of publishers who grind authors down to the lowest denominator, but I don't think it will happen - Joe Public wants the cheapest book, he's not interested in who gets what of which share.
 
Boneman, not sure about that. I wonder how much the general readership know about royalty rates and the like.
 
I doubt readers care what authors make. It's like music - if they give it any thought they assume all writers are like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. And they'll go on believing it even if shown numbers that prove otherwise. People will use all sorts of cognitive tricks to ensure they have a clean conscience when it comes to what they pay for entertainment.
 
listening to a traditionally published (with a big six) author talking about his experiences has cemented me as a self publisher with no desire to go through a publisher. His lack of support with marketing if a bigger author was coming out at the same time and 7p a book sold has made me realise I don't have to sell as many with self publishing (especially an ebook).
 
Brian Turner said:
I thought it was nearer 50p for mass market paperbacks? Before agent's commission and tax, of course. :)

But the rate via Createspace isn't much better...and they can't get you into bookshops.
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I'm not going to be using Createspace but no he ends up with 7p per paperback sold. This is a midlist author with an agent and published with a big six. The chances are you've heard the name. Whereas a self publisher I know ends up with over a £1 per book and they sell in similar numbers. I've been to some very interesting presentations recently.
 
Brian Turner said:
Are you sure you're not confusing it with 7% list price? That's the standard paperback rate that I've heard. Not 7p, but 7%+ according to sales volume.
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He might be confusing it. But he definitely said 7p he's not the first to have quoted a similar figure in the last six months.
 
Hi,

Agreed that trade published authors are screwed - not to put it politely. But that's the deal they chose. They are gambling that in getting less they'll make more by selling more and having a big company behind them to push their work. It's a valid choice - not necessarily the smart one these days.

But the underlying problem is that people aren't paid according to what they deserve. They're paid according to market forces. The trade publishers can do this because they're always going to have a lot more authors knocking on their doors - (supply) - and they only need a few - (demand).

Cheers, Greg.
 
I think he's doing his math wrong. He's probably getting 7% of the cover price, which would be 7p per £, not 7p per book, and would probably come out to something more than 40p for each copy sold.
 
psychotick said:
But the underlying problem is that people aren't paid according to what they deserve. They're paid according to market forces.
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the problem is that if market forces dictate that a person gets paid 'x' then in a capitalist world that is all they deserve. Morally speaking or considering the effort expended that's obviously wrong but, regrettably, pay doesn't reflect what people are 'worth' (in a purely financial sense). I will say that I am surprised that more authors (and musicians!) don't go down the whole self-publishing route and cut out the parasites
 
Brian Turner said:
I thought it was nearer 50p for mass market paperbacks? Before agent's commission and tax, of course. :)

But the rate via Createspace isn't much better...and they can't get you into bookshops.
Click to expand...

The 50p will be on books sold at full price in independent bookshops. That's often a very small percentage of sales these days. Chains, supermarkets, amazon, book clubs, discounts etc will all negotiate their own deal and the authors' royalties can end up cut to the bone.

(I'm talking about the UK where the book market is unregulated - think some places, e.g. France, might not apply. In UK things were different before the abolition of the Net Book Agreement which essentially prevented publishers/booksellers discounting prices.)

Also, publishers can't always get you into bookshops either. Obviously they will try, but the number of published books (not even counting self-pubbed) books vastly exceeds the space in the (declining) number of bookshops. Visibility is often a big problem.

There's no doubt it's an incredibly tough situation.
 
Waylander, whilst that's generally true I think once the general public knows about a situation that seems unfair they may be willing to pay more. An example would be the very low price of milk which is causing great harm to British dairy farmers. At least one supermarket offers the same milk, clearly marked, at a higher price to help the farmers. From the little I've heard, it's selling pretty well.
 
WaylanderToo said:
the problem is that if market forces dictate that a person gets paid 'x' then in a capitalist world that is all they deserve. Morally speaking or considering the effort expended that's obviously wrong but, regrettably, pay doesn't reflect what people are 'worth' (in a purely financial sense).
Click to expand...

This is a wider topic, but how can you arrive at what someone's work is worth except by market forces? The only alternative would be to pay everyone the same (or have a committe of some kind deciding the value of various types of labour). I could spent 5,000 hours writing a symphony, and it would be **** and no one would want to listen to it -- would my work then be worth anything, to anyone?

I agree that market forces in the trad publishing route might decree that someone's writing is worth next to nothing, when self-publishing might reveal that to be not at all the case. But the self-publisher is still deriving his income from the market.
 
@HareBrain - yeah I didn't express myself particularly well then as I didn't want to offend. In pure terms if you don't get paid 'x' for your masterwork then you don't deserve it - but you tell someone that their work is effectively worthless and you tend to raise a few hackles ;)
 
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