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Re: [ARSCLIST] interesting!
Marcos suggestion is already happening in the publishing business,
wherein authors are doing their own independent "publishing". The big
publishers are / have become only printing companies, requiring authors
to spend their own money for promotions. Having to do that, why not just
do it anyway and get the lion's share of the price instead of 10% or less.
Between publishers, distributors and bookstores 78% or more of the price
of a book is shared by them, not the author...and it takes years to get
noticed by them, if ever. Even for those who publish their own material
they have to pay 55-78% of the price to some distributors like Baker and
Taylor (so they can give 30% discounts to libraries.)
In addition big publishers are only making enough copies for such buyers
as Barnes and Noble and Borders thus making the works unavailable to
independent bookstores.
Is it no wonder then that publishers are having to merge, consolidate
and use backlists? The same is happening to music recordings, and it's
probably time it did. Authors and Artists should have more say about
income as well as distribution.
Trescott Research – Paul T. Jackson
Information & Library Development
26301 SE 424^th St., Enumclaw, WA 98022
http://www.trescottresearch.com <http://www.trescottresearch.com/>
Marcos Sueiro wrote:
I'm going to get whipped for this, but I'll say it anyway: I don't see
what is so terrible if large large record companies simply disappear.
Music has been around much longer than the recording industry, so I do
not think that the quality of music itself would suffer. And certainly
there must be other business models for musicians to make a living
without having to feed a huge machine that often sucked their blood,
especially now that the means to record music are available to so
many. Big Music generated lots of money for over a century, but only a
very small proportion of all musicians saw that money. Perhaps Big
Music is just not good for music anymore.
Marcos
Tom Fine wrote:
So, even though I'm no fan of Big Music, they have a point in all of
this. If the owners of the copyright material -- descendants of those
who put up money to record the old stuff and current funders of new
material -- cannot get a return on their investment, they do not have
a business model. So in that case nothing can be made available
because it's a money-losing proposition and companies are not in
business to lose money.