Following yesterday's post about supermarkets and publishers, I had an email from Felicity Lawrence. She tells me that everything that I described has already happened. She has heard all the publishers' arguments and excuses that I listed, and so have her published friends. Authors, she says, are the new whingeing farmers!
Well yes. I can only agree with that. The point I wanted to make was that, since the abolition of the Net Book Agreement, booksellers have been selling books at 'bargain' prices. In order to maintain their own profit margins, they have been demanding (and getting) larger discounts from publishers. And the publishers, in turn, have been steadily reducing their payments to the weakest participants in the whole book trade, namely the writers.
I am convinced that this process will continue, and I just want all you as-yet-unpublished writers out there to know what joys of authorship await you.
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