Chris Lindley asked Tim Butcher:

Hi Tim. Everything book related seems to be owned by amazon today, whether new or secondhand or community focussed like this very website. And it comes as no surprise that they wield their power aggressively and unfairly for everyone except the consumer. Do you know where consumers should buy their books in order to maximise the cut that the author will actually receive? Thanks and I trust you're all well.

Tim Butcher I share your sense of foreboding: a corporate leviathan like Amazon looms over so much of our lives (including this website, as you point out), it feels intimidating, unaccountable and utterly disinterested in the individual, instead focussed on the crowd/mass/cohort.
The answer to your question feels therefore counterintuitive: in theory, buying a Kindle version of a book gives the biggest cut to the author. Because of the way e-books work (no storage costs, no shelfing, no couriers etc) the contractual arrangement gives something like 25 per cent of the sale price to the author for a Kindle, more like 12 per cent of the sale price for a hard copy book.
But you will spot the important term there is `sale price’. Amazon discount kindle prices to stimulate sales’ volume so the author ends up with 25 per cent of a fairy cake, not a birthday cake, if you follow a clumsy metaphor.
And the whole publishing industry is based on author weakness and author trust: authors are so weak they cannot hold publishers/distributors/booksellers to account so can never be sure how many units are actually sold, instead they are left having to trust the numbers produced by third parties who do not work for the writer but for the distributor.
In short, I would encourage any buyer not to buy from an online leviathan but from a small, independent bookshop/website. The earnings for the author in cash terms might not be measurably larger, but the health of the wider bibliophile world is hugely reliant on that lower-level book ecosystem being strong, vibrant and alive.

flag