$1k-2k per month for the back cover of a single book makes me think that the publishing industry should be explosively disrupted. Not sure how exactly, but that is ridiculous.

Here is an idea: a movement towards exclusively epub with open source DRM and cryptocurrency. And local physical stores can just start printing jackets.

Well that includes all the books metadata like cover image, author etc, but ya I agree :). I think part of the problem is that fee to Ingram is for flat files or their API, and you are basically paying them to centralize what they collect from authors.

I am not a lawyer, but there is no way that using all these things to sell a book is not fair use.

Possibly, but someone still needs to do the work of the aggregation and QC.

> The back of the book jacket costs about $1,000 to $2,000 a month to license, so I can't do that yet.

Wow, what?! If true, that is absolute madness... I mean, it's basically advertising material - as an author, why on earth wouldn't I want it to be as available as possible?

Plus, surely online book shops are not selling $2,000+ of each single book before they break even?

This reeks of some ripoff publishing scheme authors are tricked into by publishers (where they essentially lose control if their own product.)

Walled gardens are the main scenario where you’ll see absolutely mental cost schemes like these.

$1k to $2k a month for api / flat files with most book data :). It is available to use on the site, but not in a programmatic way.

Haha, that makes much more sense, it seemd read your original comment too literally :D

Wait, does the text of the blurb cost $1000-2000/mo? If so, does GoodReads pay that? Because they have the back blurb of every book, don't they?

If it's the specific image of the back of the book, I don't actually see that being make-or-break for anyone. You can put the blurb that's styled vaguely like the back of a book if it makes people read it more.