Music and writing are two very different industries though.
For musicians record sales have never been the revenue stream, a musician gets paid an advance and then they make more money touring selling merchandise and eventually from licensing royalties after the advance and marketing gets paid back.
For writers book sales are pretty much the only revenue stream, they get an advance and a cut of every book sold, then what? Writers can occasionally swing speaking engagements but by and large there's no merch, no tour, movies don't pay people so they can read passages in the background.
If writers aren't in a hurry to drive ebook prices down to $0.50, it's not because they think publishing houses are powerful, it's because they like to eat.
EDIT: Another problem thing to remember is that a song, at 3 minutes or so, can be rapidly iterated hundreds of times, and done so at paying gigs. Listeners can stand in for the editorial process to a degree.
A 400 page novel has a minimum iteration speed of probably a week, and normally several weeks, which the author is not getting paid during, and how many people are willing to read the sometimes subtly different 400 pages a dozen times.
Granted that they are different industries, but still you'd think the putative intelligentsia of our times, our writers and story tellers, especially in sci-fi, would be ahead of the curve and not so far behind it.
For musicians record sales have never been the revenue stream, a musician gets paid an advance and then they make more money touring selling merchandise and eventually from licensing royalties after the advance and marketing gets paid back.
For writers book sales are pretty much the only revenue stream, they get an advance and a cut of every book sold, then what? Writers can occasionally swing speaking engagements but by and large there's no merch, no tour, movies don't pay people so they can read passages in the background.
If writers aren't in a hurry to drive ebook prices down to $0.50, it's not because they think publishing houses are powerful, it's because they like to eat.
EDIT: Another problem thing to remember is that a song, at 3 minutes or so, can be rapidly iterated hundreds of times, and done so at paying gigs. Listeners can stand in for the editorial process to a degree.
A 400 page novel has a minimum iteration speed of probably a week, and normally several weeks, which the author is not getting paid during, and how many people are willing to read the sometimes subtly different 400 pages a dozen times.