In one corner we have the traditional book publishers such as Harper Collins, owned by News Limited. In emails released by the US government in their fixed-price lawsuit against Apple, News Limited’s James Murdoch in negotiation with Apple’s Steve Jobs says:
The economics are simple enough. [Amazon] Kindle pays us a wholesale price of $13 and sells it for 9.99. An author gets $4.20 on the sale of a hardcover and $3.30 on the sale of the e-book on the Kindle.
And in the other corner, we have self publishers such as Sacha Greif, Jarrod Drysdale and Nathan Barry. In a blog post discussing self publishing sales of all three authors, Barry reveals sales from the first 48 hours of his recent book, The App Design Handbook:
The 48-hour sales total was $19,547 from 322 sales.
On one hand, we have a major player in the publishing business quite happy for it’s main ebook e-tailer to make a loss on each sale, and in the other, three individuals writing and publishing their own material and publicly discussing how to make the best out of it.
I know which model is going to succeed.
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