Right now, the risk is entirely Musa's. I have no intention of increasing that risk when we're still so young. I mean--surely, you realize what we're putting into each book, right? We're paying for cover art, interior design, editing, line editing, and formatting. We're paying for publicity and marketing. We're paying for website and IT costs. We're paying salaries. We're paying for ISBN registration. We're paying for everything.
For an epublished book? Sorry, but it makes perfect sense. Let's try this ONE MORE TIME--YOU CANNOT COMPARE AN E-PUBLISHER TO AN ESTABLISHED PRINT HOUSE. They're not the same thing at all. Authors turn to e-publishing for a number of reasons--and one of the main ones is for the monthly income. (Well, monthly at Musa at least. For some others, the income is quarterly) There are a couple of larger, older e-publishing houses that are paying token advances to some authors--but not many. Advances are not the normal status quo in digital publishing--because they aren't necessary. Publishers give advances against future earnings when they contract a book. Why? Because it takes anywhere from a year and a half to two years to get a book into print and out onto the market, and another half a year to a year to get paid for the first sales of that book. In epublishing, that wait is substantially less. Most of Musa is only at four months between contract and publication.
Therefore we don't pay advances, and we don't need to do so. I don't have a darn bit of trouble being held to a standard that is normal within our particular sphere of publishing. But I'm most certainly NOT going to be held to a standard that doesn't apply to the digital sector of publishing and one that our competitors/peers aren't held to. Musa will start paying advances when the other thousands of epublishers start to pay advances.
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