Comment Re:Um, what does the publisher do? (Score 3, Informative) 306
Maybe the agreement should be 70% (seems low anyway, BT is free!) for the Author and Publisher and 30% for Amazon (so when it's inevitably decided publishers aren't vital in Ebooks we don't have to go through this again!).
That was the agreement - 30% to Amazon, and right now, 35%-35% split for authors/publishers.
And no, publishers do a lot - the author's main job is to deliver a manuscript. Just a block of text.
it's the publishers job to take that block of text, add the necessary front and back matter (Tables of Contents, Indices, cover art, author bio, etc), then also format that block of text for print and electronic publishing (not as easy as it seems - authors can often have their own interpretations of how to format text), and also link in images and such. Oh yeah, and market it - because otherwise your book is just one amongst the thousands appearing daily. And maybe do a bit of editing on the side.
It's very rare that a self-published book is actually any good - most are just crap (because the author kept getting rejected), and spelling mistakes galore. You really wonder if the author is even literate at all.
Sure there are a few good examples and there are publishers that do get out of the way and let you do it all (and some very good examples), but those are the exception, not the rule.
Hell, you could even consider a publisher's job to help wade through the millions of crap manuscripts submitted daily to find the good works and reduce it down to thousands that have a chance of making money.