"Traditional Publishers" is a whole different game though: They will try to make money by moving huge quantities of something. So they start with something that has potential mass-appeal, like a cookbook, and then 99% of the value is a result of marketing. The publisher will have the ability to get the author on cook shows on television, will advertise it on billboards, will have the distribution power to get the book into the display window at bookstores etc etc. -- In such a case, the publisher is executing all of the strategically important functions, and the author is almost exchangeable.

Compare that to someone whose life's work is some academic area where their book has become the standard textbook. If it weren't for that person's work, there wouldn't be a product here. That person can choose between a handful of publishers, and whichever publisher they go with has a product, and the others don't have one. -- The recent backlash against Elsevier and the drive towards open journals is basically showing how different the economics are here.

But the fact is: There is a spectrum here, and the above are the two ends of the spectrum.

Amazon's model is basically encouraging the cookbook-stuff and being extremely hostile towards the latter kind of content.