An elderly woman receives a phone call from a once eminent publishing house. The nice man on the phone tells her that his company is going to reprint her deceased father’s books. Wonderful news, she says — delighted that her old man is not quite dead and buried yet. Hope for us, she thinks. The publisher adds that they want a party to mark this important literary event, a proper knees up with champagne and canapés. She’s all for this. What generosity, she thinks. Then they say that want to make a small contribution to the party costs, maybe fifty quid.
Traditional publishers are in extremis. Print continues to collapse; eBook sales are not covering losses. That’s the prevailing story, even if the precise elements fluctuate from time to time. And that is not all. The US Justice Department’s price-fixing suit against Apple and five publishers, if upheld, may force publishers to abandon the agency model, which has maintained high prices for books and driven down the net sum, from which writers take their royalties, to the equivalent of 17.5
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