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This article hits home for me. I used to love creating quality ebooks for authors. Whatever you wanted I could do, things like drop caps, special inserted quotes, linked references all no problem. It is all just HTML/CSS to me. But I couldn’t compete with people who were offering to convert a whole book for $35. It didn’t matter that my quality was great and their quality wasn’t. On the other side, I do understand that indie authors are often under a tight budget and can’t spend a whole lot for a lot of different services. It is a lose – lose situation. Having less than stellar work out there makes the whole industry suffer. I don’t have any answers but at Good E Reader shares her thoughts. What’s your opinion on this mess?
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Driving Down the Price of Publishing
Not too long ago, self-published authors were collectively admonished about the need to invest in their work. Hiring quality editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and formatters before attempting to sell a book was the constant mantra of industry experts. While some hapless writers continued to slap their Word docs up on Amazon and hope to snare a few readers, authors who took their careers seriously made the proper investments.
Around that time, a number of startups emerged, all billing themselves as eBay-like marketplaces for author services. Many of those startups have shuttered their virtual doors, while a few that produced meaningful connections between authors and publishing service providers have managed to thrive. But that hasn’t stopped newcomers to the game from trying to continually undercut the concept of paying for quality work.
“When I first began finding clients through online freelance postings, the self-publishing industry was a different place,” stated one editor who did not wished to be named. “Authors who had done their homework not only knew how much editing might cost, but they also knew enough to have sent their work to their writing group for critiques or even beta readers before declaring it ‘ready’ for editing. Now, I find new job postings almost daily requesting full edits of an 80,000-word book for $100.”
Read the full post on Good E Reader