. . . to 25 percent of net. (UPDATE: Link — a letter on the Macmillan website from CEO John Sargent — no longer any good.)

By which we can surmise that there’s some nervousness out there. Maybe writers are getting restless about the size of their cut?

Of course, this is still far less than the royalty you get for a Kindle ebook, which is 70 percent of gross.

Which makes me wonder a bit about this statement from the Sargent letter:

[T]he publishing industry standard for electronic book royalty rates has clearly settled 25% of net receipts

“Clearly”?

He also takes a swipe at Amazon that doubles as a way to ‘splain why Macmillan won’t match the Kindle numbers:

Amazon had been providing the e-book versions of new release hardcovers at $9.99, considerably under Amazon’s cost, making it very difficult for anyone else to prosper or even enter the market.

Okay, then.

We live in interesting times . . .