e-Book Royalties - Publishers Screw Authors Again.

It's all digital and costs fractions of a cent to deliver. So why do publishers want to be pigs and take most of the money from ebooks?

BECAUSE THEY CAN!

Then, of course, they'll lock it down with DRM and a proprietary e-book reader to make sure no one buys it! This is an intellectually twisted business.

"LITTLE, BROWN CHIEF Executive Ursula Mackenzie wrote to literary agencies last week, setting out its digital stall and echoing Random House CEO Gail Rebuck's proposal of a 15% royalty on e-books. It is a call that has already been rejected by Curtis Brown, whose Contracts Manager, Anna Davis, told PN: “We want to support publishers in what they are doing in this area and we accept its importance, but we do not want to agree to a royalty that we do not believe is fair. Yes, publishers have big set-up costs with digital, but once they are set up, the unit cost of producing an e-book is much lower.”

Rest of the article here.