Publishers Weekly panel provokes e-royalty discussion - Hachette gets schooled

Publishers Weekly panel provokes e-royalty discussion | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home:

"With his math, which he walked the audience through, a publisher, on a title with a $26 list price, makes roughly $5.10 on the hardcover while the author makes $3.90. On the e-book sold through the wholesale model, the publisher brings in $9.25 while the author gets $3.25. On the e-book sold through the agency model, the publisher gets $6.38 and the author gets $2.28."

This nifty bit of arithmetic came after:

Neil DeYoung, director of digital media for Hachette, repeated in his opening remarks the standard publisher “company line” that most e-book production prices are just as high as print book prices—the only difference is the costs that are there are less visible.

Publishers will continue to demand to make huge amounts of money for the simple reason that they are huge powerful corporations and, as such, they deserve to remain an integral part of the writer->reader supply chain.

With Amazon offering %70 royalties to authors who self-publish, it is hard to see how publishing houses can stick to the same business practices.