Cheap bet: We won't hear many authors rejoice over this. As an example, Stephen King's pinned tweet is concerned with a very different kind of theft ( https://nitter.it/StephenKing ).
In academia, this is slightly narrowing our choices (not much because Z-Lib has never been the main source). As for the books we can't read... well, we won't then. At this point, it's the books competing over our attention, not us scrambling to find them. Another cheap bet: The balances of academic publishers at least will not improve from this.
Am I misunderstanding something, or is this tweet circling the completely wrong part? Revenue vs payment is completely meaningless, because it is low due to advance payments.
The 'important' part is revenue after profits vs royalties, or profit sharing, which seems to be around 8.3%.
Imagine working really hard to put content out and you have to agree to a deal of 8% you, 92% the one just distributing it for you. It’s like when artists were complaining that Spotify wasn’t paying them enough when in reality is their label sucking most of the earnings.
Just to prevent misunderstanding: I have no opinion on 8.3% profit sharing agreements being okay or not. I just noted that I think the tweet is putting the focus on the wrong part.
I have no opinion, because I have way too little info. The only info I am fairly certain about is authors are not forced into traditional publishing.
In academia, this is slightly narrowing our choices (not much because Z-Lib has never been the main source). As for the books we can't read... well, we won't then. At this point, it's the books competing over our attention, not us scrambling to find them. Another cheap bet: The balances of academic publishers at least will not improve from this.