The monetization paradox, de Charles Stross: el punto de vista de un escritor que se ha molestado en pensar con cuidado en el impacto que van a tener los e-books, con datos interesantes sobre las cuentas del mundo editorial.

Paper books are going to be around for a long time to come, but I'm betting on the ebook cannibalizing the mass-market paperback by 2020 at the latest — which is where half the paper book revenue stream comes from. Hardcovers pay much better than paperbacks, but far fewer people are willing to pay for them. Paperbacks pay the author roughly 7-10% of the cover price of a £7 or $8 book. But the ebook shift is potentially catastrophic: ebook royalties are typically in the 15-30% range, but the cost of e-goods in general is being deflated towards the $1.99 price point by the App Store model pushed by Apple and their competitors. Amazon aren't helping either — increasing the publisher's cut sounds good, until you realize that the proposed $9.99 cap on ebooks replaces the high-end $24 hardcover. Not only does it mean less royalties for the authors, it means less money for the publishers — or, more importantly, their marketing divisions.

Parte de la emoción tras el anuncio del iPad es el papel que va a jugar Amazon,

in general, the author gets 10% of the cover price of a hardback. The publisher makes 10% of the cover price in profit. The publisher spends another 10% of the cover price on editing, production, printing, marketing, and so on. The distribution chain eats 60-70% of the cover price – typically 30-40% at the bookshop and 30-40% at the wholesaler. Amazon is both bookshop and distributor, but passes around 20-30% of the cover price on to the customer, thus taking about twice as much money per book sold as the author and publisher combined.