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Authors will make far more on those ebooks through direct sales than publishers are offering. There is no incentive for authors to sell those rights to traditional publishers which means, in the fairly short term, publishers run out of material to sell.

Authors can easily produce ebook versions of novels and shorter work which publishers don't own.

We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there's very little we can do about that.

Many writers will get a contract by selling chapters and outlines or something like that. I wrote the entire novel, and when it was all finished, I would give it to my agent and say, 'Well, here's a novel; sell it if you can.' And they would do that, and it was good because I never had anyone looking over my shoulder.

Higher ebook prices only benefit one group: publishers.

There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them.

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well.