Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Downside of Publishing

As a published author with two (soon to be three) books to my credit, I find it discouraging as an author and a buyer to discover something like this. The book above is "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, the Making of the First Animated Christmas Special", published by Oxberry Press roughly around the same time as my book "Created and Produced by Total TeleVision productions".

I was planning to buy this book as it is quite interesting and very well laid out and a very handsome looking book, but I was looking on Amazon today and I now have missed my opportunity, (unless I see it in a store somewhere at cover price, which was already quite high if I remember, but worth the price). Now, it's selling for $125 and up and out of print.

If I was the author (Dale Van Critters), I'd be disappointed that more people couldn't read my book. Perhaps he doesn't care, but I would feel bad that the more casual fan couldn't get the book without paying good money for it. And Van Critters doesn't even benefit. I can pay $125 for it, but Van Critters would not get a percentage of that as a royalty.

Going to the Oxberry Press website, it mentions that they deal specifically with limited editions, but I think that's wrong, especially in today's "print on demand" world. Oh well.

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