Another other question would be: how much does the publisher pay their in house staff to do those things...and how many in house staff ARE there to do those jobs?
Showin' mom my royalty "check" with my name misspelled, watchin her face turn white...
All I'm sayin' is if I told a publisher $2500 to layout a book, they'd tell me we're outta budget baby.
I think, *ideally* a publisher is a way for a group of artists to subsidize each other's work. "My recent book did really well so I'll invest some of that money into your work" and so on. Same kind of deal as a record label, in my mind. Of course, in reality, few publishers exist to do this at all.
My attitude these days is that anyone earning more money than me is not my friend. Harsh but hey, gimme some and I'll soften my attitude for you personally.
It'd be really hard to start, but I've always fantasized about a creator owned publisher for this reason. The creators would have equal ownership and the admin side would essentially operate as a nonprofit, reinvesting whatever they made.
The first thing this made me think of was Maximum Fun, I believe all the podcasts are artist owned, though to what extent the advertising pays for the shows... I can't imagine that's where they make a living.
