Great Regulars: Authors need to wake up to the potential threat

of the free e-book. Just as the book has been devalued by cheap editions, authors have been marginalized by publishers' unethical business practices such as eliminating the author's advance, expecting authors to pay for promotion, and rendering a book out of print after only six months of lackluster sales when many books need years to gain readership. Now the free e-book is another means of undermining the importance of the mid-list author ("mid-list" is the publishing industry's term for authors whose books are not bestsellers).

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: On Writers & Writing: E-books devalue the difficult writing process of authors

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