4 ms·

i think they need them more for editing. All the kindle-only books I've read, had a ton of spelling errors.

• aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Freelance editors are pretty cheap. I don't know about their quality, however.
  • runevault 17y ago
    Actually that's an interesting side point, might this improve/increase the business model for freelance editors? The potential is rather interesting, though would that just be line edits or something more substantive?
    • aaronblohowiak 17y ago
      If you're really interested in this, you could look into the editor market on lulu
      • runevault 17y ago
        I'm not sure if Lulu gives the same effect, because you have a higher cost per book that isn't going to you, since there is a flat cost per book (unless you wanted to charge a lot, of course). But if you want to sell a $5.00 book this will let you, pretty sure there's no way to do that w/o losing money via Lulu.
        • aaronblohowiak 17y ago
          You can publish ebooks through Lulu with a base cost of 1.49 http://www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks/?cid=publish_portal http://www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks/?cid=publish_portal I've not gone through their tutorial to see what the minimum cost is, however. Their comparison suggests how a 13$ ebook can earn you more as a writer than a $20 physical book, but once again I dont know what the minimums are.
          • runevault 17y ago
            Ah ha, goes to show I never looked at Lulu closely enough! Will have to look at that a bit, since it likely would have had a similar effect. The only differentiating point then is if people will be willing to invest more into work they put up on amazon or not, which is likely no but hard to prove. Hrm.
  • reeses 17y ago
    The problem with that is that the people who need editors are often the ones who don't believe they need them. If it's money out of their pocket, why bother? I agree that some of the Kindle-only (often of previously self-published books) are painful and embarrassing to read. "You do realize you've used the same distinctive phrase five times so far, and we're only on page 50, right?"
• brc 17y ago
  Publishers are yet another industry where much of the value chain is locked up within the one organization. This is historical because of the economies of scale needed to turn a profit in the area. With more free markets in all areas, and lower costs of distribution, many of those reasons do not necessarily apply anymore. What you may see is the devolution of the publishing business into smaller parts, and each part completed by a different business/individual. For example, I might write a book, find an editor on a freelance site, then find an artist, and a PR agent. I could even perhaps hire a manager who co-ordinated the whole process for me. I might then either self-publish (LuLu) or put it straight to Kindle. In the past these were all handled in-house, and the publisher had high overheads for all the staff and accompanying infrastructure. I think the internet will continue to break up these value chains into smaller compononents with more competition at each step. Publishers will only go with big-selling authors, and probably only after that Author finds success independently - kind of like a band signing a deal after releasing their own EP and making a go of it.